Explaining the Microtubule Energy Balance: Contributions Due to Dipole Moments, Charges, van der Waals and Solvation Energy.

ABSTRACT: Microtubules are the main components of mitotic spindles, and are the pillars of the cellular cytoskeleton. They perform most of their cellular functions by virtue of their unique dynamic instability processes which alternate between polymerization and depolymerization phases. This in turn is driven by a precise balance between attraction and repulsion forces between the constituents of microtubules (MTs)-tubulin dimers. Therefore, it is critically important to know what contributions result in a balance of the interaction energy among tubulin dimers that make up microtubules and what interactions may tip this balance toward or away from a stable polymerized state of tubulin. In this paper, we calculate the dipole-dipole interaction energy between tubulin dimers in a microtubule as part of

SUBMITTER: Ayoub AT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5666724 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature