Issue 45, 2012

Nematic growth of microtubules that changed into giant spiral structure through partial depolymerization and subsequent dynamic ordering

Abstract

In a long capillary cell with temperature gradient, tubulin dimers with alpha and beta subunits polymerized according to the preferential polarity, i.e., the anisotropic spiral addition of the dimers to the beta-terminated “plus end” dominated the formation of microtubules. As the result, the helical hollow cylinders generated the oriented nematic liquid crystalline structure with centimeter-length. In the next stage, where microtubules were under the partial polymerization/depolymerization equilibrium due to the concentration fluctuation, the dynamic rearrangement of microtubules such as their shortening (depolymerization) and subsequent tilting of orientation axis caused the structural change from the oriented nematic liquid crystalline structure to some giant spiral structure which was subjected by the ordered dipole and the helical chirality of microtubules.

Graphical abstract: Nematic growth of microtubules that changed into giant spiral structure through partial depolymerization and subsequent dynamic ordering

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
20 Jul 2012
Accepted
06 Sep 2012
First published
26 Sep 2012

Soft Matter, 2012,8, 11544-11551

Nematic growth of microtubules that changed into giant spiral structure through partial depolymerization and subsequent dynamic ordering

K. Shigehara, H. Kudoh, S. Mori, Y. Tamura, A. Kakugo, R. Kawamura, H. Furukawa, J. P. Gong, H. Masunaga, T. Masui, S. Koizumi and K. Shikinaka, Soft Matter, 2012, 8, 11544 DOI: 10.1039/C2SM26675J

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