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Nature Cell Biology 6, 1147–1149 (1 December 2004) | doi:10.1038/ncb1204-1147

There goes the neighbourhood: Eps8 joins the barbed-end crowd

Henry N. Higgs

The actin filament barbed end — the site of actin filament elongation — is a busy place. In protrusive structures such as lamellipodia, ruffles, filopodia and microvilli, the barbed end faces the protruding plasma membrane, and actin monomer addition to this end probably provides the force that drives protrusion.