Speaker
Description
In the oocyte of the common fruit fly, large scale cytoplasmic flows appear in the mid-to-late stages of oogenesis. Proteins, synthesized in adjoining nurse cells, and yolk, endocytosed through the cell cortex, are transported and mixed throughout the oocyte, presumably accelerated by the cytoplasmic flows. While a biophysical mechanism has been proposed which explains the onset of cytoplasmic streaming flows \cite{stein2021, dutta2024}, the flows thereby produced are poor at mixing and typically orient themselves orthogonal to the required transport direction \cite{jain2025}. In this talk, we explore further mechanisms which accelerate cytoplasmic mixing and transport.
Bibliography
@article{stein2021,
title={Swirling instability of the microtubule cytoskeleton},
author={Stein, David B and De Canio, Gabriele and Lauga, Eric and Shelley, Michael J and Goldstein, Raymond E},
journal={Physical review letters},
volume={126},
number={2},
pages={028103},
year={2021},
publisher={APS}
}
@article{dutta2024,
title={Self-organized intracellular twisters},
author={Dutta, Sayantan and Farhadifar, Reza and Lu, Wen and Kabacao{\u{g}}lu, Gokberk and Blackwell, Robert and Stein, David B and Lakonishok, Margot and Gelfand, Vladimir I and Shvartsman, Stanislav Y and Shelley, Michael J},
journal={Nature Physics},
volume={20},
number={4},
pages={666--674},
year={2024},
publisher={Nature Publishing Group UK London}
}
@article{jain2025,
title={Geometric effects in large scale intracellular flows},
author={Jain, Olenka and Chakrabarti, Brato and Farhadifar, Reza and Gavis, Elizabeth R and Shelley, Michael J and Shvartsman, Stanislav Y},
journal={PRX Life},
volume={3},
number={2},
pages={023007},
year={2025},
publisher={APS}
}
