A role for long-range, through-lattice coupling in microtubule catastrophe

Microtubules are cylindrical polymers of {beta}-tubulin that play critical roles in fundamental processes like chromosome segregation and vesicular transport. Microtubules display dynamic instability, switching stochastically between growing and rapid shrinking as a consequence of GTPase activity in the lattice. The molecular mechanisms behind microtubule catastrophe, the switch from growing to rapid shrinking, remain poorly defined. Indeed, two-state stochastic models that seek to describe microtubule dynamics purely in terms of the biochemical properties of GTP- and GDP-bound {beta}-tubulin incorrectly predict the concentration-dependence of microtubule catastrophe. Recent studies provided evidence for three distinct conformations of {beta}-tubulin in the lattice that likely correspond to GTP, GDP.Pi, and GDP. The incommensurate lattices observed for these different conformations raises the possibility that in a mixed nucleotide state lattice, neighboring tubulin dimers might modulate each others conformations and hence their biochemistry. We explored whether incorporating a GDP.Pi state or the likely effects of conformational accommodation can improve predictions of catastrophe. Adding a GDP.Pi intermediate did not improve the model. In contrast, adding neighbor-dependent modulation of tubulin biochemistry improved predictions of catastrophe. Conformational accommodation should propagate beyond nearest-neighbor contacts, and consequently our modeling demonstrates that long-range, through-lattice effects are important determinants of microtubule catastrophe.