title: Regulation of Microtubule  Growth and Catastrophe:  Unifying Theory and  Experiment.
abstract: Recent studies have found that microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) can regulate the dynamical properties of microtubules in unexpected ways. For most MAPs, there is an inverse relationship between their effects on the speed of growth and the frequency of catastrophe, the conversion of a growing microtubule to a shrinking one. Such a negative correlation is predicted by the standard GTP-cap model, which posits that catastrophe is due to loss of a stabilizing cap of GTP-tubulin at the end of a growing microtubule. However, many other MAPs, notably Kinesin-4 and combinations of EB1 with XMAP215, contradict this general rule. In this review, we show that a more nuanced, but still simple, GTP-cap model, can account for the diverse regulatory activities of MAPs.
authors.affiliation: Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
authors.forename: Hugo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Bowne-Anderson
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden 01307, Germany; ETH Zurich, Institute for Biochemistry, HPM E8.1, Otto-Stern-Weg 3, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Anneke
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hibbel
authors.affiliation: Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA. Electronic address: Jonathon.Howard@Yale.edu.
authors.forename: Jonathon
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Howard
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003599:Cytoskeleton / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008869:Microtubule-Associated Proteins / Q000502:physiology*; D008870:Microtubules / Q000502:physiology*; D008962:Models, Theoretical
chemical_list: D008869:Microtubule-Associated Proteins