Lateral motion and bending of microtubules studied with a new single-filament tracking routine in living cells.

ABSTRACT: The cytoskeleton is involved in numerous cellular processes such as migration, division, and contraction and provides the tracks for transport driven by molecular motors. Therefore, it is very important to quantify the mechanical behavior of the cytoskeletal filaments to get a better insight into cell mechanics and organization. It has been demonstrated that relevant mechanical properties of microtubules can be extracted from the analysis of their motion and shape fluctuations. However, tracking individual filaments in living cells is extremely complex due, for example, to the high and heterogeneous background. We introduce a believed new tracking algorithm that allows recovering the coordinates of fluorescent microtubules with ∼9 nm precision in in vitro conditions. To illustrate potentia

SUBMITTER: Pallavicini C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4070070 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature