Collision induced spatial organization of microtubules

TL;DR

This paper investigates how collisions between microtubules influence their spatial organization, demonstrating that simple growth constraints can lead to ordered structures and macroscopic alignment.

Contribution

It introduces a microtubule growth model where collision-induced constraints lead to spontaneous pattern formation and alignment in microtubule suspensions.

Findings

Microtubules self-organize into locally oriented domains

Weak external biases can induce global orientation

Collision constraints can generate ordered microtubule structures

Abstract

The dynamic behavior of microtubules in solution can be strongly modified by interactions with walls or other structures. We examine here a microtubule growth model where the increase in size of the plus-end is perturbed by collisions with other microtubules. We show that such a simple mechanism of constrained growth can induce ordered structures and patterns from an initially isotropic and homogeneous suspension. First, microtubules self-organize locally in randomly oriented domains that grow and compete with each other. By imposing even a weak orientation bias, external forces like gravity or cellular boundaries may bias the domain distribution eventually leading to a macroscopic sample orientation.