Berlin 2015 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 23: Posters: Molecular Motors

BP 23.2: Poster

Tuesday, March 17, 2015, 14:00–16:00, Poster A

A mechanism to generate stable microtubule overlaps — Denis Johann, Debajit Goswami, •Christopher Zapp, and Karsten Kruse — Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany

The mitotic spindle is a structure generated during cell division that serves to segregate the chromosomes onto the two daughter cells. It consists of microtubules spreading from each of the cell poles towards the division plane. In the spindle, the minus-ends of the tubules are pointing towards the poles, thus generating overlaps of antiparallel filaments near the centre of the cell that are stabilized by proteins, so-called crosslinkers. Controlling these overlaps is vital to the cell as it influences the physical properties of the spindle. In this work, we study a mechanism to generate and control stable overlaps of antiparallel microtubules using the interplay between different crosslinking proteins.