Nucleotide-dependent bending flexibility of tubulin regulates microtubule assembly

Hong-Wei Wang and Eva Nogales ()
Additional contact information
Hong-Wei Wang: University of California Berkeley
Eva Nogales: University of California Berkeley

Nature, 2005, vol. 435, issue 7044, 911-915

Abstract: Abstract The atomic structure of tubulin in a polymerized, straight protofilament is clearly distinct from that in a curved conformation bound to a cellular depolymerizer. The nucleotide contents are identical, and in both cases the conformation of the GTP-containing, intra-dimer interface is indistinguishable from the GDP-containing, inter-dimer contact. Here we present two structures corresponding to the start and end points in the microtubule polymerization and hydrolysis cycles that illustrate the consequences of nucleotide state on longitudinal and lateral assembly. In the absence of depolymerizers, GDP-bound tubulin shows distinctive intra-dimer and inter-dimer interactions and thus distinguishes the GTP and GDP interfaces. A cold-stable tubulin polymer with the non-hydrolysable GTP analogue GMPCPP, containing semi-conserved lateral interactions, supports a model in which the straightening of longitudinal interfaces happens sequentially, starting with a conformational change after GTP binding that straightens the dimer enough for the formation of lateral contacts into a non-tubular intermediate. Closure into a microtubule does not require GTP hydrolysis.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03606 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nature:v:435:y:2005:i:7044:d:10.1038_nature03606

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

DOI: 10.1038/nature03606

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

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