Related papers: Microtubule dynamic instability: the role of crack…
Microtubules are stiff filamentary proteins that constitute an important component of the cytoskeleton of cells. These are known to exhibit a dynamic instability. A steadily growing microtubule can suddenly start depolymerizing very…
Regulating the stability of microtubule(MT)-kinetochore attachments is fundamental to avoiding mitotic errors and ensure proper chromosome segregation during cell division. While biochemical factors involved in this process have been…
A novel theoretical model of dynamic instability of a system of linear (1D) microtubules (MTs) in a bounded domain is introduced for studying the role of a cell edge in vivo and analyzing the effect of competition for a limited amount of…
Microtubules (MTs) are dynamic protein filaments essential for intracellular organization and transport, particularly in long-lived cells such as neurons. The plus and minus ends of neuronal MTs switch between growth and shrinking phases,…
In this study, a two-state mechanochemical model is presented to describe the dynamic instability of microtubules (MTs) in cells. The MTs switches between two states, assembly state and disassembly state. In assembly state, the growth of…
The cytoskeleton is essential for the maintenance of cell morphology in eukaryotes. In fission yeast for example, polarized growth sites are organized by actin whereas microtubules (MT) acting upstream control where growth occurs (La…
Microtubule dynamics is largely influenced by nucleotide hydrolysis and the resultant tubulin configuration changes. The GTP cap model has been proposed to interpret the stabilizing mechanism of microtubule growth from the view of…
Microtubules (MTs) represent basic components of a cytoskeleton. The present work studies nonlinear dynamics of MTs assuming tangential oscillations of the dimers. We introduce a two component model and show that the dynamics of MTs can be…
Microtubule dynamic instability arises from the hydrolysis of GTP bound to the beta-monomer of the tubulin dimer. The conformational change induced by hydrolysis is unknown, but microtubules disassemble into protofilaments of GDP-bound…
Microtubules are a major component of the cytoskeleton distinguished by highly dynamic behavior both in vitro and in vivo. We propose a general mathematical model that accounts for the growth, catastrophe, rescue and nucleation processes in…
Microtubules (MTs) are self-assembled hollow protein tubes playing important functions in live cells. Their building block is a protein called tubulin, which self-assembles in a particulate 2 dimensional lattice. We study the vibrational…
Many cellular processes are tightly connected to the dynamics of microtubules (MTs). While in neuronal axons MTs mainly regulate intracellular trafficking, they participate in cytoskeleton reorganization in many other eukaryotic cells,…
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have crucial roles in the spread of tumors during metastasis. A decisive step is the extravasation of CTCs from the blood stream or lymph system, which depends on the ability of cells to attach to vessel…
The microtubule network, an important part of the cytoskeleton, is constantly remodeled by alternating phases of growth and shrinkage of individual filaments. Plus-end tracking proteins (+TIPs) interact with the microtubule and in many…
Dynamic instability in the cytoskeleton underlies a great many vital cellular processes. In neurons, it is thought to play a role in information processing and the establishment of synaptic connections. It is from this interneuronal…
The intermittent transition between slow growth and rapid shrinkage in polymeric assemblies is termed dynamic instability, a feature observed in a variety of biochemically distinct assemblies including microtubules, actin and their…
The structural integrity of microtubules is paramount for cellular function. We present a theoretical analysis of their lattice fracture, focusing on the influence of multi-seam structures arising from monomer defects and aiming to provide…
Here we study a driven lattice gas model for microtubule depolymerizing molecular motors, where traffic jams of motors induce stochastic switching between microtubule growth and shrinkage. We term this phenomenon \enquote{traffic dynamic…
Microtubules have been in biophysical focus for several decades. Yet the confusing and mutually contradicting results regarding their elasticity and fluctuations have shed some doubts on their present understanding. In this paper we expose…
We propose a stochastic model that accounts for the growth, catastrophe and rescue processes of steady state microtubules assembled from MAP-free tubulin. Both experimentally and theoretically we study the perturbation of microtubule…