ArticleThe Journal of cell biology1997
A metastable intermediate state of microtubule dynamic instability that differs significantly between plus and minus ends.
Article in The Journal of cell biology, 1997. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 46 papers.
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Who cites it
46 citing papers in PubMed.
- Tubulin flux at spastin-induced nanodamage sites regulates microtubule rescue frequency and EB1 lifetimes.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Mechanical force locally damages, remodels, and stabilizes the lattice of spindle microtubules.Current biology : CB · 2026Article
- The GTP-tubulin cap is not the determinant of microtubule end stability in cells.Molecular biology of the cell · 2024Article
- Stable GDP-tubulin islands rescue dynamic microtubules.The Journal of cell biology · 2024Article
- CLASPs stabilize the pre-catastrophe intermediate state between microtubule growth and shrinkage.The Journal of cell biology · 2023Article
- Theory of tip structure-dependent microtubule catastrophes and damage-induced microtubule rescues.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Quantification of microtubule stutters: dynamic instability behaviors that are strongly associated with catastrophe.Molecular biology of the cell · 2022Article
- Regulation of microtubule dynamics, mechanics and function through the growing tip.Nature reviews. Molecular cell biology · 2021Review
- Atomistic molecular dynamics simulations of tubulin heterodimers explain the motion of a microtubule.European biophysics journal : EBJ · 2021Article
- With the Permission of Microtubules: An Updated Overview on Microtubule Function During Axon Pathfinding.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2021Review
- Dynamic Instability from Non-equilibrium Structural Transitions on the Energy Landscape of Microtubule.Cell systems · 2020Article
- Collective effects of XMAP215, EB1, CLASP2, and MCAK lead to robust microtubule treadmilling.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Microtubule minus-end stability is dictated by the tubulin off-rate.The Journal of cell biology · 2019Article
- Tau isoform-specific stabilization of intermediate states during microtubule assembly and disassembly.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2019Article
- Spastin is a dual-function enzyme that severs microtubules and promotes their regrowth to increase the number and mass of microtubules.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Rescuing microtubules from the brink of catastrophe: CLASPs lead the way.Current opinion in cell biology · 2019Review
- CLASP stabilization of plus ends created by severing promotes microtubule creation and reorientation.The Journal of cell biology · 2019Article
- Microtubule-severing enzymes: From cellular functions to molecular mechanism.The Journal of cell biology · 2018Review
- Severing enzymes amplify microtubule arrays through lattice GTP-tubulin incorporation.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2018Article
- Kif18a regulates Sirt2-mediated tubulin acetylation for spindle organization during mouse oocyte meiosis.Cell division · 2018Article
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3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The current two-state GTP cap model of microtubule dynamic instability proposes that a terminal crown of GTP-tubulin stabilizes the microtubule lattice and promotes elongation while loss of this GTP-tubulin cap converts the microtubule end to shortening. However, when this model was directly tested by using a UV microbeam to sever axoneme-nucleated microtubules and thereby remove the microtubule's GTP cap, severed plus ends rapidly shortened, but severed minus ends immediately resumed elongation (Walker, R.A., S. Inoué, and E.D. Salmon. 1989. J. Cell Biol. 108: 931-937). To determine if these previous results were dependent on the use of axonemes as seeds or were due to UV damage, or if they instead indicate an intermediate state in cap dynamics, we performed UV cutting of self-assembled microtubules and mechanical cutting of axoneme-nucleated microtubules. These independent methods yielded results consistent with the original work: a significant percentage of severed minus ends are stable after cutting. In additional experiments, we found that the stability of both severed plus and minus ends could be increased by increasing the free tubulin concentration, the solution GTP concentration, or by assembling microtubules with guanylyl-(alpha,beta)-methylene-diphosphonate (GMPCPP). Our results show that stability of severed ends, particularly minus ends, is not an artifact, but instead reveals the existence of a metastable kinetic intermediate state between the elongation and shortening states of dynamic instability. The kinetic properties of this intermediate state differ between plus and minus ends. We propose a three-state conformational cap model of dynamic instability, which has three structural states and four transition rate constants, and which uses the asymmetry of the tubulin heterodimer to explain many of the differences in dynamic instability at plus and minus ends.
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