Jul 29, 2014
1st Place Video at 2014 Princeton University Art of Science competition
And the winner is... Sabine Petry and co-workers, Petry Lab, Princeton Department of Molecular Biology.
Description: Microtubules are hollow filaments that serve as the skeleton of the cell. They were thought to grow linearly, but this movie shows that they can branch: microtubules (red with growing tips in green) grow off the wall of existing microtubules. In addition, microtubules are moved along the glass surface by molecular motors. Microtubule branching amplifies the microtubules while preserving their polarity and explains how microtubules can cause the mitotic spindle of a dividing cell to reliably segregate chromosomes (Petry et al., Cell 2013).
Scale: A microtubule has a diameter of 25 nanometer and is the largest cytosekeletal filament in the cell.
More on the Princeton University Art of Science competition: http://artofsci.princeton.edu/