Description of Research Area

How a Cell-Wide Flow Emerges from a Fluctuation inside the Cell?

Research Subject

Cytoplasmic streaming is a cell-wide flow of the cytoplasm, which can be considered as a collective behavior inside the cell. The goal of my project is to construct a unified model of 3 types of cytoplasmic streaming –circulation, saltation, and rotation–, in which the flow emerges spontaneously without a global cue. The constructed model will be verified experimentally. We have been investigating cytoplasmic streaming in the C. elegans zygote –which can be classified as a circulation type. We have identified the molecules required for the streaming, and are constructing a numerical model. We would like to go further to extend the model to account for the 2 other types of streaming, and experimentally manipulate the types of the flow in vivo. This project is expected to reveal a role of fluctuations inside the cell to drive and modulate the cell’s behavior.

Research Partner

KIMURA, Kenji

Structural Biology Center, National Institute of Genetics