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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 28: Cytoskeleton

BP 28.9: Talk

Thursday, March 21, 2024, 12:15–12:30, H 2032

Lattice dynamics in microtubules: Theoretically exploring the dual effects of Tau — Subham Biswas¹, Rahul Grover², Cordula Reuther², Mona Grünwald¹, •Karin John³, Stefan Diez², and Laura Schaedel¹ — ¹Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany — ²TU Dresden, Germany — ³Liphy, CNRS/Université Grenoble-Alpes, Grenoble, France

Microtubules are key structural elements of living cells that are crucial for cell division, intracellular transport and motility. They are dynamic polymers, which grow and shrink by addition and removal of tubulin dimers at their extremities. Within the microtubule shaft, dimers adopt a densely packed and highly ordered crystal-like lattice structure, which is generally not considered to be dynamic. Recent experiments have shown that microtubules exhibit a lattice dynamics far away from the extremities. This dynamics manifests itself as localized incorporation of free tubulin into the microtubule shaft. Tubulin incorporation into the microtubule lattice can occur either spontaneously or facilitated by microtubule associated proteins such as molecular motors and severing enzymes. The neuronal protein Tau is the latest addition to the growing number of molecules known to stimulate turnover of the MT lattice. However, the origin and underlying mechanisms of Tau stimulated lattice turnover is yet unknown, since Tau is rather known to stabilize the MT lattice. Here, we theoretically explore potential mechanisms of Tau stimulated lattice turnover, consistent with experimental observations.

Keywords: Microtubules; Microtubule associated proteins; Lattice dynamics; Defects; Tau