CeNS Colloquium

Dr. Stephan Grill
MPI of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics and MPI for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden

Active material flow of the contractile actomyosin cortex is important for many cell biological processes, amongst which is the segregation of specific proteins to distinct domains of the cell during cellular polarization. Here I report on the physical mechanisms that underlie coordinated and large-scale flow of the cellular cortex in Caenorhabditis elegans embryos, which we have investigated in a combined experimental and theoretical approach. Through advection, flow appears to switch a set of PAR proteins to obtain a non-homogeneous distribution which we have analyzed in the framework of reaction-diffusion. Our results reveal how cellular mechanics and biochemistry interact to establish cellular polarity.