{"doi":"10.1242/jcs.243873","title":"Cofilin is required for polarization of tension in stress fiber networks during migration","abstract":"Cell migration is associated with the establishment of defined leading and trailing edges, which in turn requires polarization of contractile forces. While the actomyosin stress fiber (SF) network plays a critical role in enforcing this polarity, precisely how this asymmetry is established remains unclear. Here, we provide evidence for a model in which the actin-severing protein cofilin (specifically cofilin-1) participates in symmetry breakage by removing low-tension actomyosin filaments during transverse arc assembly. Cofilin knockdown (KD) produces a non-polarized SF architecture that cannot be rescued with chemokines or asymmetric matrix patterns. Whereas cofilin KD increases whole-cell prestress, it decreases prestress within single SFs, implying an accumulation of low-tension SFs. This notion is supported by time-lapse imaging, which reveals weakly contractile and incompletely fused transverse arcs. Confocal and super-resolution imaging further associate this failed fusion with the presence of crosslinker-rich, tropomyosin-devoid nodes at the junctions of multiple transverse arc fragments and dorsal SFs. These results support a model in which cofilin facilitates the formation of high-tension transverse arcs, thereby promoting mechanical asymmetry.","journal":"Journal of Cell Science","year":2020,"id":69085,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":21,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9533,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":267986,"name":"Sanjay Kumar","orcid":"0000-0002-9996-4883","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":281803,"name":"Stacey Lee","orcid":"0000-0001-5645-8449","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":64,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:42:22.705573Z","pmid":"32501289","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":[]}