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Plant Biology

2013

Biology Faculty Publications & Presentations

Cotyledon

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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Microtubule Severing At Crossover Sites By Katanin Generates Ordered Cortical Microtubule Arrays In Arabidopsis, Quan Zhang, Erica Fishel, Tyler Bertroche, Ram Dixit Nov 2013

Microtubule Severing At Crossover Sites By Katanin Generates Ordered Cortical Microtubule Arrays In Arabidopsis, Quan Zhang, Erica Fishel, Tyler Bertroche, Ram Dixit

Biology Faculty Publications & Presentations

Highlights

  • Severing primarily depolymerizes the overlying CMT at crossover sites
  • Severing probability increases nonlinearly with crossover time
  • Katanin localizes to crossover sites and is required for severing
  • Loss of katanin activity prevents the formation of coaligned CMT arrays

Summary
The noncentrosomal cortical microtubules (CMTs) of land plants form highly ordered parallel arrays that mediate cell morphogenesis by orienting cellulose deposition [1, 2 and 3]. Since new CMTs initiate from dispersed cortical sites at random orientations [4], parallel array organization is hypothesized to require selective pruning of CMTs that are not in the dominant orientation. Severing of CMTs at crossover sites …