Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Rice LM
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7980253 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Rice Luke M LM Moritz Michelle M Agard David A DA
The Journal of cell biology 20210501 5
Microtubules are dynamic polymers that play fundamental roles in all eukaryotes. Despite their importance, how new microtubules form is poorly understood. Textbooks have focused on variations of a nucleation-elongation mechanism in which monomers rapidly equilibrate with an unstable oligomer (nucleus) that limits the rate of polymer formation; once formed, the polymer then elongates efficiently from this nucleus by monomer addition. Such models faithfully describe actin assembly, but they fail t ...[more]