Hiroaki Ito, Masahiro Makuta, Yukinori Nishigami, Masatoshi Ichikawa
JOURNAL OF THE PHYSICAL SOCIETY OF JAPAN 86(10) 101001 2017年10月 査読有り招待有り
Muscles are the engine of our body, and actomyosin is the engine of a cell. Both muscle and the actomyosin use the same proteins, namely, actin, and myosin, which are the pair of cytoskeleton and motor proteins generating a force to realize deformation. The properties of force generation by actomyosin at a single-molecule level have been studied for many years. Moreover, the active properties of higher-order structures integrated by actomyosin are attracting the attention of researchers. Here, we review the recent progress in the study of reconstituted actomyosin systems in vitro toward real-space models of nonequilibrium systems, collective motion, biological phenomena, and active materials.