Are microtubules tension sensors?

Olivier Hamant (), Daisuke Inoue, David Bouchez, Jacques Dumais and Eric Mjolsness
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Olivier Hamant: Université de Lyon, UCB Lyon 1, ENS de Lyon, INRA, CNRS
Daisuke Inoue: Cell and Plant Physiology Laboratory, CytoMorpho Lab, CEA, Biosciences and Biotechnology Institute of Grenoble
David Bouchez: Université Paris-Saclay
Jacques Dumais: Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez
Eric Mjolsness: University of California

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Mechanical signals play many roles in cell and developmental biology. Several mechanotransduction pathways have been uncovered, but the mechanisms identified so far only address the perception of stress intensity. Mechanical stresses are tensorial in nature, and thus provide dual mechanical information: stress magnitude and direction. Here we propose a parsimonious mechanism for the perception of the principal stress direction. In vitro experiments show that microtubules are stabilized under tension. Based on these results, we explore the possibility that such microtubule stabilization operates in vivo, most notably in plant cells where turgor-driven tensile stresses exceed greatly those observed in animal cells.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-10207-y

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