Young’s modulus of actin

Value 2 GPa
Organism bacteria
Reference Wingreen NS, Huang KC. Physics of Intracellular Organization in Bacteria. Annu Rev Microbiol. 2015 Oct 15 69: 361-79. doi: 10.1146/annurev-micro-091014-104313. p.366 5th paragraphPubMed ID26488278
Primary Source Kojima H, Ishijima A, Yanagida T. 1994. Direct measurement of stiffness of single actin filaments with and without tropomyosin by in vitro nanomanipulation. PNAS 91: 12962–66PubMed ID7809155
Method Primary source abstract:"Here, [investigators] directly measure the stiffness of single actin filaments with and without tropomyosin, using a recently developed technique for nanomanipulation of single actin filaments with microneedles."
Comments p.366 3rd paragraph:"To gain intuition about how the physical properties of a filament affect its bending, consider a protein filament as a cylinder with radius r and preferred radius of curvature R that bends uniformly along its length. The bending modulus is set by Young's modulus of the protein, which for actin is ∼2 GPa (primary source)."
Entered by Uri M
ID 112091