Microtubule stability studied by integral equation theory

Abstract

Microtubules, polymers of tubulin dimers, are important components of cytoskeleton, performing multiple tasks, being important targets in pharmacology and having possible applications as bionanotechnology tools. Dimers assemble into polar, linear protofilaments that form a closed tube. In the process of looking for most favorable energy configurations of protofilaments, we obtain, via integral equation theory, a series of potential of mean force profiles for many cases differing in chemical composition, tubulin conformation, offset value, and a number of protofilaments in a single microtubule.