Elastic properties of grafted microtubules

Pampaloni, Francesco; Lattanzi, Gianluca; Jonás, Alexandr; Surrey, Thomas; Frey, Erwin und Florin, Ernst-Ludwig (5. July 2006): Elastic properties of grafted microtubules. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 103, No. 27: pp. 10248-10253

Abstract

We use single-particle tracking to study the elastic properties of single microtubules grafted to a substrate. Thermal fluctuations of the free microtubule's end are recorded, in order to measure position distribution functions from which we calculate the persistence length of microtubules with contour lengths between 2.6 and 48 micrometers. We find the persistence length to vary by more than a factor of 20 over the total range of contour lengths. Our results support the hypothesis that shearing between protofilaments contributes significantly to the mechanics of microtubules

• Item Type: Journal article
• Form of publication: Submitted Version
• Faculties: Physics
• Subjects: 500 Science > 530 Physics
• ISSN: 1091-6490
• Annotation: Published under the title: Thermal fluctuations of grafted microtubules provide evidence of a length-dependent persistence length
• Language: English