{"doi":"10.1101/2021.06.06.447254","title":"A tug of war between filament treadmilling and myosin induced contractility generates actin ring","abstract":"In most eukaryotic cells, actin filaments assemble into a shell-like actin cortex under the plasma membrane, controlling cellular morphology, mechanics, and signaling. The actin cortex is highly polymorphic, adopting diverse forms such as the ring-like structures found in podosomes, axonal rings, and immune synapses. The biophysical principles that underlie the formation of actin rings and cortices remain unknown. Using a molecular simulation platform, called MEDYAN, we discovered that varying the filament treadmilling rate and myosin concentration induces a finite size phase transition in actomyosin network structures. We found that actomyosin networks condense into clusters at low treadmilling rates or high myosin concentration but form ring-like or cortex-like structures at high treadmilling rates and low myosin concentration. This mechanism is supported by our corroborating experiments on live T cells, which exhibit ring-like actin networks upon activation by stimulatory antibody. Upon disruption of filament treadmilling or enhancement of myosin activity, the pre-existing actin rings are disrupted into actin clusters or collapse towards the network center respectively. Our analyses suggest that the ring-like actin structure is a preferred state of low mechanical energy, which is, importantly, only reachable at sufficiently high treadmilling rates.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2021,"id":222450,"datarank":0.10397207708399181,"base_score":0.6931471805599453,"endowment":0.6931471805599453,"self_citation_contribution":0.10397207708399181,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.10397207708399181,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9412,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":454789,"name":"Kaustubh Wagh","orcid":"0000-0001-8514-027X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":823540,"name":"Aashli Pathni","orcid":"0000-0003-4196-890X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":823541,"name":"Haoran Ni","orcid":"0000-0003-3600-4583","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":823542,"name":"Vishavdeep Vashisht","orcid":"0000-0002-9367-0278","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":246608,"name":"Arpita Upadhyaya","orcid":"0000-0003-1496-919X","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":418802,"name":"Garegin A. Papoian","orcid":"0000-0001-8580-3790","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":491580,"name":"Qin Ni","orcid":"0000-0002-0738-1817","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":47,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:54:03.549854Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}