title: Building complexity: insights into self-organized assembly of microtubule-based architectures.
abstract: Successful completion of diverse cellular functions, such as mitosis, positioning organelles, and assembling cilia, depends on the proper assembly of microtubule-based structures. While essentially all of the proteins needed to assemble these structures are now known, we cannot explain how even simple features such as size and shape are determined. As steps toward filling this knowledge gap, there have been several recent efforts toward reconstituting, with purified proteins, the basic structural motifs that recur in diverse cytoskeletal arrays. We discuss these studies and highlight how they shed light on the self-organized assembly of complex and dynamic cytoskeleton-based cellular structures.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Chemistry and Cell Biology, The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue, New York, NY 10065, USA.
authors.forename: Radhika
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Subramanian
authors.forename: Tarun M
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Kapoor
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003599:Cytoskeleton / Q000737:chemistry / Q000502:physiology / Q000648:ultrastructure; D006801:Humans; D008869:Microtubule-Associated Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000502:physiology; D008870:Microtubules / Q000737:chemistry / Q000502:physiology* / Q000648:ultrastructure; D008954:Models, Biological; D020409:Molecular Motor Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000502:physiology; D055503:Protein Multimerization
chemical_list: D008869:Microtubule-Associated Proteins; D020409:Molecular Motor Proteins