ArticleThe Journal of cell biology2006
Microtubules can bear enhanced compressive loads in living cells because of lateral reinforcement.
Article in The Journal of cell biology, 2006. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 264 papers.
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Who cites it
264 citing papers in PubMed.
- Nuclear Wrinkles Result From Geometric Adaptations to Cellular and Nuclear Morphological Changes in Epithelial Cells.Genes to cells : devoted to molecular & cellular mechanisms · 2026Article
- Morphogenesis of bacterial colonies in liquid crystalline environments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Fibrillar adhesion dynamics govern the timescales of nuclear mechano-response via the vimentin cytoskeleton.Nature materials · 2026Article
- Microtubule stiffening by the doublecortin-domain protein ZYG-8 contributes to mitotic spindle orientation during zygote division in Caenorhabditis elegans.PLoS genetics · 2026Article
- Viscoelasticity of the Heart: An Overview of Viscoelastic Measurements at Different Scales.Annual review of biomedical engineering · 2026Review
- Nuclear Mechanics and Nuclear Mechanotransduction in Cancer Cell Migration and Invasion.Biomolecules · 2026Review
- SSNA1 mechanically reinforces the damaged microtubule lattice.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Cellular plasticity: a double-edged sword driving malignant transformation and adaptive remodeling in stem cells.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2026Review
- Bending Dynamics of Magnetic Filaments at a Curved Bacterial Bath Interface.Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids · 2025Article
- Nuclear destabilisation - a possible genesis of cancer?Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Microtubule forces drive nuclear damage in LMNA cardiomyopathy.Nature cardiovascular research · 2025Article
- Adhesion-regulated dynamics of cells.Biophysical journal · 2025Article
- Microtubules and mechanosensing: key players in endothelial responses to mechanical stimuli.Cellular and molecular life sciences : CMLS · 2025Review
- Microtubule-driven cell shape changes and actomyosin flow synergize to position the centrosome.The Journal of cell biology · 2025Article
- Active spiralling of microtubules driven by kinesin motors.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Elite haplotype of STRONG1 enhances rice yield by improving lodging resistance, panicle and plant architecture.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Localized tension-induced giant folding in unstructured elastic sheets.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Dynamic clamping induces rotation-to-beating transition of pinned filaments in gliding assays.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Optimizing Biomimetic 3D Disordered Fibrous Network Structures for Lightweight, High-Strength Materials via Deep Reinforcement Learning.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Stem cell mechanoadaptation. I. Effect of microtubule stabilization and volume changing stresses on cytoskeletal remodeling.APL bioengineering · 2025Article
204 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Cytoskeletal microtubules have been proposed to influence cell shape and mechanics based on their ability to resist large-scale compressive forces exerted by the surrounding contractile cytoskeleton. Consistent with this, cytoplasmic microtubules are often highly curved and appear buckled because of compressive loads. However, the results of in vitro studies suggest that microtubules should buckle at much larger length scales, withstanding only exceedingly small compressive forces. This discrepancy calls into question the structural role of microtubules, and highlights our lack of quantitative knowledge of the magnitude of the forces they experience and can withstand in living cells. We show that intracellular microtubules do bear large-scale compressive loads from a variety of physiological forces, but their buckling wavelength is reduced significantly because of mechanical coupling to the surrounding elastic cytoskeleton. We quantitatively explain this behavior, and show that this coupling dramatically increases the compressive forces that microtubules can sustain, suggesting they can make a more significant structural contribution to the mechanical behavior of the cell than previously thought possible.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.