Self-Organization of Polymerizing Microtubules

The cell is a complex autonomous machine taking in information, performing computations, and responding to the environment. To enable agile read/write capabilities, much of the molecular biochemistry that performs these computations must be transient and weak, allowing signals to be carried as a function of the concentration of numerous and coupled interactions. Traditionally, biochemical experiments can only measure strongly interacting systems that can last for long times in dilute concentrations. We have previously shown that many weak, transient interactions can have strong repercussions on the overall activity and can, in fact, overpower strongly interacting systems. Here, we will present new results on microtubule self-organization in the presence of these weak crosslinkers during polymerization. We find that the filament length and relative crosslinker concentration dictate the organization of the filaments from a percolated network to a non-connected set of tactoid-like structures.