Unidirectional movement of an actin filament taking advantage of temperature gradients

An actin filament with heat acceptors attached to its Cys374 residue in each actin monomer could move unidirectionally even under heat pulsation alone, while in the total absence of both ATP and myosin. The prime driver for the movement was temperature gradients operating between locally heated portions on an actin filament and its cooler surroundings. In this report, we investigated how the mitigation of the temperature gradients induces a unidirectional movement of an actin filament. We then observed the transversal fluctuations of the filament in response to heat pulsation and their transition into longitudinally unidirectional movement. The transition was significantly accelerated when Cys374 and Lys336 were simultaneously excited within an actin monomer. These results suggest that the mitigation of the temperature gradients within each actin monomer first went through the energy transformation to transversal fluctuations of the filament, and then followed by the transformation further down to longitudinal movements of the filament. The faster mitigation of temperature gradients within actin monomer helps build up the transition from the transversal to longitudinal movements of the filament by coordinating the interaction between the neighboring monomers.