Flash Points

Starting at a single point in the night sky, fireworks explode out in all directions. Careful choreographing of firework focal points is the key to a beautifully balanced display. On a smaller scale, the actin architecture in our cells starts in a similar way. Actin is one of the main components of the cell's cytoskeleton – the internal scaffolding that helps cells keep their shape. Strings of actin assemble into a highly ordered network of bundles to help the cell move and grow. The molecular Catherine wheel pictured is the product of work that aims to understand how these structures arrange themselves. Like a firework, actin filaments burst from single 'nucleation points'. This research, which artificially placed these points around microscopic circles, showed that it’s the layout of start sites around the cell that dictates the ultimate structure of the actin network.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

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Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Manuell Théry
• Institute of life sciences research and technologies (iRTSV), CEA, France
• Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature Materials Copyright 2010
• Published in Nature Materials; 9, 827–832 (2010)