The role of microtubule movement in bidirectional organelle transport

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Jul 22;105(29):10011-6. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0800031105. Epub 2008 Jul 14.

Abstract

We study the role of microtubule movement in bidirectional organelle transport in Drosophila S2 cells and show that EGFP-tagged peroxisomes in cells serve as sensitive probes of motor induced, noisy cytoskeletal motions. Multiple peroxisomes move in unison over large time windows and show correlations with microtubule tip positions, indicating rapid microtubule fluctuations in the longitudinal direction. We report the first high-resolution measurement of longitudinal microtubule fluctuations performed by tracing such pairs of co-moving peroxisomes. The resulting picture shows that motor-dependent longitudinal microtubule oscillations contribute significantly to cargo movement along microtubules. Thus, contrary to the conventional view, organelle transport cannot be described solely in terms of cargo movement along stationary microtubule tracks, but instead includes a strong contribution from the movement of the tracks.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Biological Transport, Active
  • Biophysical Phenomena
  • Biophysics
  • Cell Line
  • Cytoskeleton / physiology
  • Drosophila
  • Green Fluorescent Proteins / genetics
  • Green Fluorescent Proteins / metabolism
  • Microscopy, Fluorescence
  • Microscopy, Video
  • Microtubules / physiology*
  • Models, Biological
  • Molecular Motor Proteins / physiology
  • Movement
  • Organelles / physiology*
  • Peroxisomes / physiology
  • Recombinant Proteins / genetics
  • Recombinant Proteins / metabolism

Substances

  • Molecular Motor Proteins
  • Recombinant Proteins
  • enhanced green fluorescent protein
  • Green Fluorescent Proteins