Whole Lotta Shakin’ / Broader Impact

IM Kulić, AEX Brown, H Kim, C Kural, B Blehm, PR Selvin, PC Nelson and VI Gelfand

Various processes and arrangements of microtubules emanating from a cell’s nucleus, and observed in our work.

We have exquisite information about the static structures of cellular components, but still little understanding of how they orchestrate their many dynamic functions. The understanding now beginning to emerge will influence cell biology over the coming years. Recently developed imaging technology allows us to look inside living cells with unprecedented spatial and time resolution (nanometers and milliseconds). Extending this method to two colors allowed us to perceive previously hidden relations between cell components. For example, our work documented correlation between the motions of distant call cargos, indicating that they were both attached to the same active structural element (a microtubule). Similarly, relative motion of two cargos was correlated to the unbundling of their common microtubule track.

IM Kulic and PC Nelson, Europhys Lett  2007; IM Kulić, AEX Brown, H Kim, C Kural, B Blehm, PR Selvin, PC Nelson and VI Gelfand, The role of microtubule movement in bidirectional organelle transport. PNAS 2008.