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Direct observation of microtubule treadmilling by electron microscopy

Using an immunoelectron microscopic procedure, we directly observed the concurrent addition and loss of chicken brain tubulin subunits from the opposite ends of microtubules containing erythrocyte tubulin domains. The polarity of growth of the brain tubulin on the ends of erythrocyte microtubules wa...

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Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Rockefeller University Press 1985
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2113982/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4055889
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description Using an immunoelectron microscopic procedure, we directly observed the concurrent addition and loss of chicken brain tubulin subunits from the opposite ends of microtubules containing erythrocyte tubulin domains. The polarity of growth of the brain tubulin on the ends of erythrocyte microtubules was determined to be similar to growth off the ends of Chlamydomonas axonemes. The flux rate for brain tubulin subunits in vitro was low, approximately 0.9 micron/h. Tubulin subunit flux did not continue through the entire microtubule as expected, but ceased when erythrocyte tubulin domains became exposed, resulting in a metastable configuration that persisted for at least several hours. We attribute this to differences in the critical concentrations of erythrocyte and brain tubulin. The exchange of tubulin subunits into the walls of preformed microtubules other than at their ends was also determined to be insignificant, the exchange rate being less than the sensitivity of the assay, or less than 0.2%/h.
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spelling pubmed-21139822008-05-01 Direct observation of microtubule treadmilling by electron microscopy J Cell Biol Articles Using an immunoelectron microscopic procedure, we directly observed the concurrent addition and loss of chicken brain tubulin subunits from the opposite ends of microtubules containing erythrocyte tubulin domains. The polarity of growth of the brain tubulin on the ends of erythrocyte microtubules was determined to be similar to growth off the ends of Chlamydomonas axonemes. The flux rate for brain tubulin subunits in vitro was low, approximately 0.9 micron/h. Tubulin subunit flux did not continue through the entire microtubule as expected, but ceased when erythrocyte tubulin domains became exposed, resulting in a metastable configuration that persisted for at least several hours. We attribute this to differences in the critical concentrations of erythrocyte and brain tubulin. The exchange of tubulin subunits into the walls of preformed microtubules other than at their ends was also determined to be insignificant, the exchange rate being less than the sensitivity of the assay, or less than 0.2%/h. The Rockefeller University Press 1985-11-01 /pmc/articles/PMC2113982/ /pubmed/4055889 Text en This article is distributed under the terms of an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike–No Mirror Sites license for the first six months after the publication date (see http://www.rupress.org/terms). After six months it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 4.0 Unported license, as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).
spellingShingle Articles
Direct observation of microtubule treadmilling by electron microscopy
title Direct observation of microtubule treadmilling by electron microscopy
title_full Direct observation of microtubule treadmilling by electron microscopy
title_fullStr Direct observation of microtubule treadmilling by electron microscopy
title_full_unstemmed Direct observation of microtubule treadmilling by electron microscopy
title_short Direct observation of microtubule treadmilling by electron microscopy
title_sort direct observation of microtubule treadmilling by electron microscopy
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2113982/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4055889