BIOB10H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Microfilament, Intermediate Filament, Polymerization
Document Summary
Remember when we talked about how the cytoskeleton is made of: Cytoskeleton overview: microfilaments (aka actin filaments, microtubules c. In this lecture, we"ll be talking about microfilaments. Actin filaments are made up of the monomer called g-actin . G-actin is a globular actin (meaning it is globed-shaped) If you join a couple of g-actin together (which is polymerization), you make f-actin , which are the actual microfilaments. It has a minus end and a plus end . The plus end is the barbed end (when the filament divides into two) G-actin are the monomers, that can be added to either the plus end or the minus end; however, the concentration of monomers must be high. When the concentration of monomers is low, g-actin prefers the plus end. This is when f-actin breaks to g-actin ( depolymerization ) Most actin filaments then act as adp-actin subunits. We use this thing called myosin, which are motor proteins that move along the.
