Coronin Promotes the Rapid Assembly and Cross-linking of Actin Filaments and May Link the Actin and Microtubule Cytoskeletons in Yeast

Coronin is a highly conserved actin-associated protein that until now has had unknown biochemical activities. Using microtubule affinity chromatography, we coisolated actin and a homologue of coronin, Crn1p, from Saccharomyces cerevisiae cell extracts. Crn1p is an abundant component of the cortical actin cytoskeleton and binds to F-actin with high affinity (Kd 6 × 10−9 M). Crn1p promotes the rapid barbed-end assembly of actin filaments and cross-links filaments into bundles and more complex networks, but does not stabilize them. Genetic analyses with a crn1Δ deletion mutation also are consistent with Crn1p regulating filament assembly rather than stability. Filament cross-linking depends on the coiled coil domain of Crn1p, suggesting a requirement for Crn1p dimerization. Assembly-promoting activity is independent of cross-linking and could be due to nucleation and/or accelerated polymerization. Crn1p also binds to microtubules in vitro, and microtubule binding is enhanced by the presence of actin filaments. Microtubule binding is mediated by a region of Crn1p that contains sequences (not found in other coronins) homologous to the microtubule binding region of MAP1B. These activities, considered with microtubule defects observed in crn1Δ cells and in cells overexpressing Crn1p, suggest that Crn1p may provide a functional link between the actin and microtubule cytoskeletons in yeast

Interplay and competition between superconductivity and charge orderings in the zero-bandwidth limit of the extended Hubbard model with pair hopping and on-site attraction

This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in Journal of Superconductivity and Novel Magnetism.We present studies of an effective model which is a simple generalization of the standard model of a local pair superconductor with on-site pairing (i.e., the model of hard core bosons on a lattice) to the case of finite pair binding energy. The tight binding Hamiltonian consists of (i) the effective on-site interaction U, (ii) the intersite density-density interactions W between nearest-neighbours, and (iii) the intersite charge exchange term I, determining the hopping of electron pairs between nearest-neighbour sites. In the analysis of the phase diagrams and thermodynamic properties of this model we treat the intersite interactions within the mean-field approximation. Our investigations of the U0 case show that, depending on the values of interaction parameters, the system can exhibit three homogeneous phases: superconducting (SS), charge-ordered (CO) and nonordered (NO) as well as the phase separated SS-CO state.National Science Center (NCN) as a research project in years 2011-2013, under grant No. DEC-2011/01/N/ST3/00413; European Commission and Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Poland) - partial financial support from European Social Fund – Operational Programme "Human Capital" – POKL.04.01.01-00-133/09-00 – "Proinnowacyjne kształcenie, kompetentna kadra, absolwenci przyszłości"; The Fundation of Adam Mickiewicz University in Pozna