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Pulling together and pulling apart: collective cargo movement in eukaryotic cells

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To establish and maintain their internal organization, living cells must move molecules to their correct locations. Long-range intracellular movements are often driven by motor molecules moving along microtubules, similarly to trucks driving along a highway. Recent work demonstrates that some randomly dispersed cargos can generate actin filaments that form a connected network whose contraction drives collective cargo movement.

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Figure 1: Movement of intracellular cargo.
Figure 2: Geometry of contraction-driven cargo movements in various cell types.

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  1. Dyche Mullins is at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, University of California San Fransisco, 600 16th Street, N312F Genentech Hall, San Francisco, California 94158, USA,

    Dyche Mullins

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  1. Dyche Mullins
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Correspondence to Dyche Mullins.

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Mullins, D. Pulling together and pulling apart: collective cargo movement in eukaryotic cells. Nat Cell Biol 13, 1391–1392 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncb2393

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