Nucleation feedback can drive establishment and maintenance of biased microtubule polarity in neurites.

ABSTRACT: The microtubule cytoskeleton is comprised of dynamic, polarized filaments that facilitate transport within the cell. Polarized microtubule arrays are key to facilitating cargo transport in long cells such as neurons. Microtubules also undergo dynamic instability, where the plus and minus ends of the filaments switch between growth and shrinking phases, leading to frequent microtubule turnover. Although microtubules often completely disassemble and new filaments nucleate, microtubule arrays have been observed to both maintain their biased orientation throughout the cell lifetime and to rearrange their polarity as an adaptive response to injury. Motivated by cytoskeleton organization in neurites, we propose a spatially-explicit stochastic model of microtubule arrays and investigate how nucle

SUBMITTER: Scanlon HG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12662192 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature