Video of the shrinkage dynamics. Using the data from the Langevin dynamics simulations (main text; Also S4 Text in SI), we produced an animation movie of the shrinkage process of a microtubule protofilament. When ΔE = 1.2kBT (top realization in the movie), the shrinkage is dominated by unzippering and the protofilament shrinks with a velocity much greater than the experimentally observed microtubule shrinkage velocity. When ΔE = 1.4kBT (middle realization), the protofilament fluctuates in partially unzippered states and stochastic dissociation decreases its length. The shrinkage velocity in this case matches with the experimentally known shrinkage velocity. The bottom-most graphics shows the initial conformation of the protofilament. To make the movie, we calculated the observed length ℒ(t) = ℒ(0)−Rx(t)ld−bNd(t), where Rx(t) is the tip position and Nd is the number of dissociated subunit as described in the main text. To make this video, we assumed that the peeled-off part of the protofilament conformations are equivalent to their zero temperature conformations.
Jain I, Inamdar M, Padinhateeri R
CC BY 4.0
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4333834/bin/pcbi.1004099.s014.mov">S1 Video</a> from <cite style="font-style:normal">Jain I, Inamdar M, Padinhateeri R (2015). "<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4333834">Statistical Mechanics Provides Novel Insights into Microtubule Stability and Mechanism of Shrinkage</a>". <i>PLOS Computational Biology</i>. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_object_identifier" class="extiw" title="w:Digital object identifier">DOI</a>:<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004099">10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004099</a>. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PMID" class="extiw" title="w:PMID">PMID</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25692909">25692909</a>. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PubMed_Central" class="extiw" title="w:PubMed Central">PMC</a>: <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4333834">4333834</a>.</cite>