发布: 2018年12月05日第8卷第23期 DOI: 10.21769/BioProtoc.3110 浏览次数: 6439
评审: Pengpeng LiFarah HaqueJer-Sheng LIN
Abstract
In this protocol, we describe a simple microscopy-based method to assess the interaction of a microtubule-associated protein (MAP) with microtubules. The interaction between MAP and microtubules is typically assessed by a co-sedimentation assay, which measures the amount of MAP that co-pellets with microtubules by centrifugation, followed by SDS-PAGE analysis of the supernatant and pellet fractions. However, MAPs that form large oligomers tend to pellet on their own during the centrifugation step, making it difficult to assess co-sedimentation. Here we describe a microscopy-based assay that measures microtubule binding by direct visualization using fluorescently-labeled MAP, solving the limitations of the co-sedimentation assay. Additionally, we recently reported quantification of microtubule bundling by measuring the thickness of individual microtubule structures observed in the microscopy-based assay, making the protocol more advantageous than the traditional microtubule co-pelleting assay.
Keywords: Microtubule (微管)Background
Microtubules are dynamic polar filaments made up of polymerized tubulin subunits. Cells use microtubules to organize the cytosol and to build complex architectures necessary for cell growth and division. For instance, during interphase, microtubules act as molecular highways for motor proteins to manipulate the position of various cargoes in the cell. During mitosis, microtubules assemble the mitotic spindle to accomplish the critical task of chromosome segregation (Wadsworth and Khodjakov, 2004; Wadsworth et al., 2011). To date, we know that numerous regulators, including motor and non-motor microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs), interact with microtubules and participate in a variety of motile activities carried out by microtubules (Goshima and Scholey, 2010). In particular, many of these factors ensure that cells undergo proper mitotic progression, by helping to generate pulling and pushing forces on the microtubules for centrosome separation (Gonczy et al., 1999; Tanenbaum et al., 2008), nuclear envelope breakdown (Salina et al., 2002), mitotic spindle assembly (Rusan et al., 2002), chromosome capture and congression (Schmidt et al., 2005), spindle centering and positioning (Omer et al., 2018; Zulkipli et al., 2018), spindle checkpoint inactivation (Howell et al., 2001), and spindle elongation (Sharp et al., 1999; Khmelinskii et al., 2009).
We recently showed that She1, a MAP that regulates dynein motility along microtubule tracks (Markus et al., 2012), also crosslinks spindle microtubules to help maintain spindle integrity during spindle positioning in budding yeast (Zhu et al., 2017). In this bio-protocol, we describe a sensitive fluorescence-based assay that enables visualization and quantification of microtubule binding and crosslinking activities exhibited by a MAP. Because this assay does not need biochemical quantities of purified MAPs, we believe that it represents a significant advantage over the traditional microtubule co-sedimentation assay.
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版权信息
© 2018 The Authors; exclusive licensee Bio-protocol LLC.
如何引用
Readers should cite both the Bio-protocol article and the original research article where this protocol was used:
分类
微生物学 > 微生物细胞生物学 > 细胞骨架间的相互作用
生物化学 > 蛋白质 > 相互作用
细胞生物学 > 细胞成像 > 荧光
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