ArticleBiophysical journal2020
Microtubule Simulations Provide Insight into the Molecular Mechanism Underlying Dynamic Instability.
Article in Biophysical journal, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Lattice instability drives formation of protofilament clusters at the microtubule plus-end tips.Biophysical journal · 2026Article
- Adaptations in Plasmodium tubulin determine distinct microtubule architectures, mechanics and drug susceptibility.Nature communications · 2026Article
- On the curvature and relaxation of microtubule plus-end tips.Biophysical journal · 2026Article
- Single-molecule microtubule dynamics measurements reveal an intermediate state and clarify the role of nucleotide.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Microtubules in Martini: Parameterizing a heterogeneous elastic-network towards a mechanically accurate microtubule.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Mechanisms of microtubule dynamics from single-molecule measurements.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Microtubule dynamics are defined by conformations and stability of clustered protofilaments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Unveiling the catalytic mechanism of GTP hydrolysis in microtubules.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Review
- Beyond the GTP-cap: Elucidating the molecular mechanisms of microtubule catastrophe.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2023Article
- Polymorphic self-assembly of helical tubules is kinetically controlled.Soft matter · 2022Article
- Thermodynamic Size Control in Curvature-Frustrated Tubules: Self-Limitation with Open Boundaries.ACS nano · 2022Article
- Bending-torsional elasticity and energetics of the plus-end microtubule tip.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Structural transitions in the GTP cap visualized by cryo-electron microscopy of catalytically inactive microtubules.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Regulation of microtubule dynamics, mechanics and function through the growing tip.Nature reviews. Molecular cell biology · 2021Review
- Microtubule instability driven by longitudinal and lateral strain propagation.PLoS computational biology · 2020Article
- Coarse-Grained Simulation of Mechanical Properties of Single Microtubules With Micrometer Length.Frontiers in molecular biosciences · 2020Article
- Equilibrium mechanisms of self-limiting assembly.Reviews of modern physicsArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The dynamic instability of microtubules (MTs), which refers to their ability to switch between polymerization and depolymerization states, is crucial for their function. It has been proposed that the growing MT ends are protected by a "GTP cap" that consists of GTP-bound tubulin dimers. When the speed of GTP hydrolysis is faster than dimer recruitment, the loss of this GTP cap will lead the MT to undergo rapid disassembly. However, the underlying atomistic mechanistic details of the dynamic instability remains unclear. In this study, we have performed long-time atomistic molecular dynamics simulations (1 μs for each system) for MT patches as well as a short segment of a closed MT in both GTP- and GDP-bound states. Our results confirmed that MTs in the GDP state generally have weaker lateral interactions between neighboring protofilaments (PFs) and less cooperative outward bending conformational change, where the difference between bending angles of neighboring PFs tends to be larger compared with GTP ones. As a result, when the GDP state tubulin dimer is exposed at the growing MT end, these factors will be more likely to cause the MT to undergo rapid disassembly. We also compared simulation results between the special MT seam region and the remaining material and found that the lateral interactions between MT PFs at the seam region were comparatively much weaker. This finding is consistent with the experimental suggestion that the seam region tends to separate during the disassembly process of an MT.
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