Playing around with @kwolbachia.bsky.social 's LUT manager plugin. Absolutely love the campfire LUT🔥 😍#microtubulemonday

Our findings suggest the intriguing possibility that cells may use intracellular factors to differentially regulate MT response to mechanical stimuli, making MTs either mechanosensitive (adaptive response) or resilient to stimuli based on functional needs.🧵(8/9)

Thus damage in buckling microtubules stems from a combination of curvature and motor activity with curvature acting as a key amplifier of motor induced damage. 🧵 (7/9)

But MT breakage is relatively infrequent in cells suggesting that intracellular factors may help boost MT resilience. To test this, we performed buckling assays in presence of HEK293 cell lysates and found enhanced MT survival. 🧵(6/9)

Interestingly, we also found that buckling MTs break (predominantly at points of high curvature) even in the presence of free tubulin indicating that buckling poses a mechanical challenge that can't be balanced by intrinsic self- repair alone. 🧵 (5/9)

We found that kinesin driven buckling causes extensive damage and self-repair showing higher levels of tubulin turnover along 40-60% of the MT lattice length.🧵 (4/9)

We set out to bend and buckle microtubules dynamically ( as seen in cells) invitro and reproduced MT behaviours typically seen in cells, in vitro. 🧵(3/9)

We found that self repair in bent MTs occurs both in vitro and in cells, with incorporations being more pronounced in cells (Image credit for cell images: @morgangazzola.bsky.social @manuelthery.bsky.social )🧵(2/9)

Despite their high rigidity, microtubules (MTs) dynamically bend and buckle in cells. MT-self repair is inherent to their metastable nature, but it remains unclear whether just inherent repair mechanisms are sufficient to maintain MT integrity🧵 (1/9)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...