Ectopic A-lattice seams destabilize microtubules

Miho Katsuki, Douglas R. Drummond and Robert A. Cross ()
Additional contact information
Miho Katsuki: Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick
Douglas R. Drummond: Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick
Robert A. Cross: Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick

Nature Communications, 2014, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Natural microtubules typically include one A-lattice seam within an otherwise helically symmetric B-lattice tube. It is currently unclear how A-lattice seams influence microtubule dynamic instability. Here we find that including extra A-lattice seams in GMPCPP microtubules, structural analogues of the GTP caps of dynamic microtubules, destabilizes them, enhancing their median shrinkage rate by >20-fold. Dynamic microtubules nucleated by seeds containing extra A-lattice seams have growth rates similar to microtubules nucleated by B-lattice seeds, yet have increased catastrophe frequencies at both ends. Furthermore, binding B-lattice GDP microtubules to a rigor kinesin surface stabilizes them against shrinkage, whereas microtubules with extra A-lattice seams are stabilized only slightly. Our data suggest that introducing extra A-lattice seams into dynamic microtubules destabilizes them by destabilizing their GTP caps. On this basis, we propose that the single A-lattice seam of natural B-lattice MTs may act as a trigger point, and potentially a regulation point, for catastrophe.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4094 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms4094

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4094

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().