Dresden 2020 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 36: Cytoskeletal Filaments I
BP 36.8: Talk
Thursday, March 19, 2020, 17:15–17:30, SCH A251
Multiplication of gliding microtubules for biocomputational applications — •Cordula Reuther1, Paula Santos Otte1, Rahul Grover1, Till Korten1, Günther Woehlke3, and Stefan Diez1,2 — 1B CUBE, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany — 2Cluster of Excellence Physics of Life, TU Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany — 3Department of Physics, TU München, Garching, Germany
Recently, an approach to solve combinatorial problems was demonstrated by kinesin-1 driven microtubules exploring, as autonomous agents, physical networks of nanometer-sized channels [Nicolau et al., PNAS, 113(10), 2016]. The possibility to multiply the agents exponentially while traversing such networks is crucial for the scalability of these systems. We developed a method for the multiplication of microtubules gliding on surface-immobilized kinesin-1 and kinesin-14 molecules, respectively. Specifically, our method comprises two simultaneously proceeding processes: (1) elongation of microtubules by self-assembly of tubulin dimers and (2) cutting of microtubules by the severing enzyme spastin. The main challenge in doing so is to optimize both processes such that the average length of the filaments stays roughly constant over time while the number of filaments increases exponentially. Additionally, nucleation of new filaments ought to be avoided in order to prevent errors in the calculations performed by the microtubules. Thus, we first studied each of the two processes separately under various conditions before combining the optimized protocols to actually multiply microtubules. Finally, we aim to multiply microtubules in a physical network with channel structures.