Microtubules (MTs) are hollow cylindrical polymers composed of alphabeta-tubulin heterodimers that align head-to-tail in the MT wall, forming linear protofilaments that interact laterally. We introduce a probe of the interprotofilament interactions within MTs and show that this technique gives insight into the mechanisms by which MT-associated proteins (MAPs) and taxol stabilize MTs. In additio...

A small subset of the microtubule (MT) array in many cultured cells does not exhibit the rapid turnover (t 1/2 approximately equal to 10 min) shown by most cellular MTs. The function of the stable class of MTs is unknown and has been confounded by the apparent lack of organization of stable MTs within cells. Using an antibody against detyrosinated tubulin, a post-translationally modified form o...

Purpose: Cognitive impairment is commonly observed in patients with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE). Recently, volumetric analysis showed widespread cortical and subcortical atrophy in patients with TLE. In this study, we hypothesized that the diffuse atrophy in TLE with and without Mesial Temporal Sclerosis (MTS) was associated with cognitive impairment. Methods: To investigate atrophy patterns i...

Metallothioneins (MTs) are small cysteine-rich proteins found in various eukaryotes. Plant MTs are classified into four types based on the arrangement of cysteine residues. To determine whether all four types of plant MTs function as metal chelators, six Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) MTs (MT1a, MT2a, MT2b, MT3, MT4a, and MT4b) were expressed in the copper (Cu)- and zinc (Zn)-sensitive yeas...

The tensegrity model hypothesizes that cytoskeleton-based microtubules (MTs) carry compression as they balance a portion of cell contractile stress. To test this hypothesis, we used traction force microscopy to measure traction at the interface of adhering human airway smooth muscle cells and a flexible polyacrylamide gel substrate. The prediction is that if MTs balance a portion of contractile...

Mesial temporal sclerosis (MTS) is the most common known pathologic substrate of epilepsy. Accurate preoperative identification of unilateral MTS bymagnetic resonance (MR) imaging has had a tremendous impact on the clinical management of medically refractory seizures. It was well known in the pre-MR era that obtaining a temporal lobectomy specimen that contained MTS conferred a higher probabili...

Multicellular tumor spheroids (MTS) have been exposed to chemotherapeutic agents in vitro (nitrogen mustard) or in vivo (cyclophosphamide) and analyzed in vitro in terms of altered growth patterns. Whether the MTS were exposed in vitro or in vivo, the major effect of the drugs was to induce a dose-dependent lag period before the normal MTS growth rate resumed. Exposure of MTS in the peritoneal ...

Sebaceous gland carcinomas (SGCs) are rare malignant skin tumors occurring sporadically or as a phenotypic feature of the Muir-Torre syndrome (MTS). A subset of patients with MTS have a variant of the hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer syndrome caused by mutations in mismatch repair (MMR) genes, which lead to microsatellite instability (MSI). We evaluated the value of MSI and loss of exp...

The spindle of the colonial diatom Fragilaria contains two distinct sets of spindle microtubules (MTs): (a) MTs comprising the central spindle, which is composed of two half-spindles interdigitated to form a region of "overlap;" (b) MTs which radiate laterally from the poles. The central spindles from 28 cells are reconstructed by tracking each MT of the central spindle through consecutive seri...

Microtubule-associated protein 1A (MAP1A) and microtubule-associated protein 2 (MAP2) were shown to be colocalized on the same microtubules (MTs) within neuronal cytoskeletons by double-label immunoelectron microscopy. To investigate the electron microscopic disposition of MAP1A and MAP2 and their relationship to MTs in vivo, and to determine whether there are different subsets of MTs which spe...