This volume contains the proceedings of the 45th Mosbach Colloquium of the German Society for Biological Chemistry (GBCh). The 1994 meeting was the first in this series devoted to the cytoskeleton. This complex system enables the eukaryotic cell to form discrete contacts with neighboring cells and the extracellular matrix, to differentiate, to move, change shape, transport organelles, and proliferate. These diverse tasks are performed by three distinct fibrillar networks: microfilaments, microtubules, and intermediate filaments, which are composed of structural and regulatory elements. The...

Actin is one of the most abundant proteins and ubiquitously expressed in all eukaryotes. In recent years, the analysis of structure and function of such complexes has shed new light on actin's role in cellular and tissue morphogenesis, locomotion and various forms of intracellular motility, but also on its role in nuclear processes like chromatin architecture and transcription. Progress in understanding these different physiological phenomena, but also in unravelling the basis of actin-based pathophysiological processes has been made by combining video microscopy, molecular biology, genetics...