|
|
|
||||
| Home Help Feedback Subscriptions Archive Search Table of Contents | |||||
Journal of Cell Science, Vol 93, 705-714, Copyright © 1989 by Company of Biologists
Submitted on March 10, 1989
Accepted on May 8, 1989
1 Plant Cell Biology Croup, Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University, G.P.O. Box 475, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
Giant internodal cells of Nitella tasmanica have cortical microtubules beneath the plasma membrane and endoplasmic microtubules associated with sub-cortical actin bundles and nuclei. We depolymerized the microtubules with oryzalin and followed their reassembly by immunofluorescence. At 18°C (the standard temperature of culture), microtubules were lost from young cells within 10 min and the first microtubules were detected in the cortex within 20 min of washing out the herbicide. Microtubules of older cells disassembled and re-formed more slowly. Continued cortical microtubule assembly was at acute angles to the first-formed microtubules, building branching clusters of microtubules. At 25°C, cortical microtubule assembly generated less extensively branched clusters and was completed more rapidly. Larger clusters but shorter MTs were generated in older cells. Reassembly of microtubules in the endoplasm only began 50 min after the removal of oryzalin. We therefore conclude that assembly proceeded independently in the cortex and endoplasm. Cortical assembly involves scattered assembly events initiating microtubules from which, as the latter elongate, further microtubules assemble as branches. We suggest that similar processes operate in steady-state cells and we explain with a simple model why branched clusters of microtubules are unusually large after microtubule depolymerization. By proposing that these processes show differential changes in activity with temperature and during cell ageing, we can account in qualitative terms for the age- and temperature-dependent differences in microtubule reassembly patterns.
Key words: microtubule depolymerization, microtubule assembly, Nitella, oryzalin
Submitted on March 10, 1989
Accepted on May 8, 1989
This article has been cited by other articles:
![]() |
J. C. Ambrose, T. Shoji, A. M. Kotzer, J. A. Pighin, and G. O. Wasteneys The Arabidopsis CLASP Gene Encodes a Microtubule-Associated Protein Involved in Cell Expansion and Division PLANT CELL, September 1, 2007; 19(9): 2763 - 2775. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
N. Van Bruaene, G. Joss, and P. Van Oostveldt Reorganization and in Vivo Dynamics of Microtubules during Arabidopsis Root Hair Development Plant Physiology, December 1, 2004; 136(4): 3905 - 3919. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
R. Dixit and R. Cyr The Cortical Microtubule Array: From Dynamics to Organization PLANT CELL, October 1, 2004; 16(10): 2546 - 2552. [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
G. O. Wasteneys Microtubule organization in the green kingdom: chaos or self-order? J. Cell Sci., January 4, 2002; 115(7): 1345 - 1354. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||