The dynamic turnover of the actin cytoskeleton is regulated cooperatively by force and biochemical signaling. We previously demonstrated that actin depolymerization under force is governed by catch-slip bonds mediated by force-induced K113:E195 salt-bridges. Yet, the biochemical regulation as well as the functional significance of actin catch bonds has not been elucidated. Using AFM force-clamp experiments, we show that formin controlled by RhoA switches the actin catch-slip bonds to slip-only bonds. SMD simulations reveal that the force does not induce the K113:E195 interaction when formin binds to actin K118 and E117 residues located at the helical segment extending to K113. Actin catch-slip bonds are suppressed by single residue replacements K113E and E195K that interrupt the force-induced K113:E195 interaction; and this suppression is rescued by a K113E/E195K double mutant (E/K) restoring the interaction in the opposite orientation. These results support the biological significance of actin catch bonds, as they corroborate reported observations that RhoA and formin switch force-induced actin cytoskeleton alignment and that either K113E or E195K induces yeast cell growth defects rescued by E/K. Our study demonstrates how the mechano-regulation of actin dynamics is modulated by biochemical signaling molecules, and suggests that actin catch bonds may be important in cell functions.
The sarcomere, the fundamental unit of muscle contraction, is a highly-ordered complex of hundreds of proteins. Despite decades of genetics work, the functional relationships and the roles of those sarcomeric proteins in animal behaviors remain unclear. In this paper, we demonstrate that optogenetic activation of the motor neurons that induce muscle contraction can facilitate quantitative studies of muscle kinetics in C. elegans. To increase the throughput of the study, we trapped multiple worms in parallel in a microfluidic device and illuminated for photoactivation of channelrhodopsin-2 to induce contractions in body wall muscles. Using image processing, the change in body size was quantified over time. A total of five parameters including rate constants for contraction and relaxation were extracted from the optogenetic assay as descriptors of sarcomere functions. To potentially relate the genes encoding the sarcomeric proteins functionally, a hierarchical clustering analysis was conducted on the basis of those parameters. Because it assesses physiological output different from conventional assays, this method provides a complement to the phenotypic analysis of C. elegans muscle mutants currently performed in many labs; the clusters may provide new insights and drive new hypotheses for functional relationships among the many sarcomere components.