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

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,...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Soft matter 2012-01, Vol.8 (45), p.11544-11551
Main Authors: Shigehara, Kiyotaka, Kudoh, Hiroki, Mori, Saori, Tamura, Yoshiki, Kakugo, Akira, Kawamura, Ryuzo, Furukawa, Hidemitsu, Gong, Jian Ping, Masunaga, Hiroyasu, Masui, Tomomi, Koizumi, Satoshi, Shikinaka, Kazuhiro
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Depolymerization
Dimers
Dynamics
Helical
Liquid crystals
Nematic
Polymerization
Spirals
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary: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.
ISSN:1744-683X
1744-6848
DOI:10.1039/c2sm26675j