ArticleBiophysical journal2007
Microtubule organization in three-dimensional confined geometries: evaluating the role of elasticity through a combined in vitro and modeling approach.
Article in Biophysical journal, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 78 citations in OpenAlex.
- Conflicting roles of cell geometry, microtubule deflection, and orientation-dependent dynamic instability in cortical array organization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Microtubule-based nucleation results in a large sensitivity to cell geometry of the plant cortical array.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Organization and dynamics of cross-linked actin filaments in confined environments.Biophysical journal · 2023Article
- Cell biology of primary cell wall synthesis in plants.The Plant cell · 2022Review
- FERONIA and microtubules independently contribute to mechanical integrity in the Arabidopsis shoot.PLoS biology · 2021Article
- The role of vimentin-nuclear interactions in persistent cell motility through confined spaces.New journal of physics · 2021Article
- Article
- Cortical tension overrides geometrical cues to orient microtubules in confined protoplasts.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Cytoskeletal organization in isolated plant cells under geometry control.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Microtubule self-organisation during seed germination in Arabidopsis.BMC biology · 2020Article
- Organization of associating or crosslinked actin filaments in confinement.Cytoskeleton (Hoboken, N.J.) · 2019Article
- Are microtubules tension sensors?Nature communications · 2019Review
- Article
- Microtubule polyglutamylation and acetylation drive microtubule dynamics critical for platelet formation.BMC biology · 2018Article
- The self-organization of plant microtubules inside the cell volume yields their cortical localization, stable alignment, and sensitivity to external cues.PLoS computational biology · 2018Article
- Microtubule organization is determined by the shape of epithelial cells.Nature communications · 2016Article
- Understanding force-generating microtubule systems through in vitro reconstitution.Cell adhesion & migration · 2016Review
- Experiments inside a box lead to out-of-the-box ideas on cellular organization.Systems and synthetic biology · 2014Article
- Motor-mediated cortical versus astral microtubule organization in lipid-monolayered droplets.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2014Article
- Confinement induces actin flow in a meiotic cytoplasm.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2012Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Microtubules or microtubule bundles in cells often grow longer than the size of the cell, which causes their shape and organization to adapt to constraints imposed by the cell geometry. We test the reciprocal role of elasticity and confinement in the organization of growing microtubules in a confining box-like geometry, in the absence of other (active) microtubule organizing processes. This is inspired, for example, by the cortical microtubule array of elongating plant cells, where microtubules are typically organized in an aligned array transverse to the cell elongation axis. The method we adopt is a combination of analytical calculations, in which the polymers are modeled as inextensible filaments with bending elasticity confined to a two-dimensional surface that defines the limits of a three-dimensional space, and in vitro experiments, in which microtubules are polymerized from nucleation seeds in microfabricated chambers. We show that these features are sufficient to organize the polymers in aligned, coiling configurations as for example observed in plant cells. Though elasticity can account for the regularity of these arrays, it cannot account for a transverse orientation of microtubules to the cell's long axis. We therefore conclude that an additional active, force-generating process is necessary to create a coiling configuration perpendicular to the long axis of the cell.
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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.