Key instability (original) (raw)

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Microtubule dynamic instability

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology volume 9, pages s14–s15 (2010)Cite this article

Previous studies had inferred the behaviour of individual microtubules from the biochemical properties of the bulk polymer. Mitchison and Kirschner used microtubule seeds incubated in solutions of various tubulin concentrations and, in addition to assessing these properties, they visualized the microtubules at fixed time points using microscopy. They observed that although the total polymer mass reached a plateau and remained constant, the microtubule population did not consist of a fixed number of microtubules of the same length. Instead, the number of microtubules decreased with time and their mean length increased. This demonstrated the coexistence of growing and shrinking microtubules, with the latter depolymerizing rapidly to provide new subunits for growth. Given that long microtubules eventually disappeared, they concluded that transitions between polymerization and depolymerization were probably rare. The authors coined the term 'dynamic instability' to describe these properties of microtubule polymerization.

This work was an instant classic, defining the dynamic properties of microtubules. Erika Holzbaur

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

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  1. Associate Editor, Nature Cell Biology,
    Nathalie Le Bot

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  1. Nathalie Le Bot
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Le Bot, N. Key instability.Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 9 (Suppl 1), s14–s15 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrm2584

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