Both social and engineering factors must be further explored and scrutinized across the globe—as should notions of justice related to flooding impacts and responses.
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Edited by T. C. Lubensky, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, and approved July 8, 2013 (received for review February 13, 2013)
Abstract
Many cells exhibit large-scale active circulation of their entire fluid contents, a process termed cytoplasmic streaming. This phenomenon is particularly prevalent in plant cells, often presenting strikingly regimented flow patterns. The driving mechanism in such cells is known: myosin-coated organelles entrain cytoplasm as they process along actin filament bundles fixed at the periphery. Still unknown, however, is the developmental process that constructs the well-ordered actin configurations required for coherent cell-scale flow. Previous experimental works on streaming regeneration in cells of Characean algae, whose longitudinal flow is perhaps the most regimented of all, hint at an autonomous process of microfilament self-organization driving the formation of streaming patterns during morphogenesis. Working from first principles, we propose a robust model of streaming emergence that combines motor dynamics with both microscopic and macroscopic hydrodynamics to explain how several independent processes, each ineffectual on its own, can reinforce to ultimately develop the patterns of streaming observed in the Characeae and other streaming species.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: r.e.goldstein{at}damtp.cam.ac.uk.
Author contributions: F.G.W. and R.E.G. designed research, performed research, and wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1302736110/-/DCSupplemental.
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
Self-organization of cytoplasmic streaming
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