Journal
DEVELOPMENTAL CELL
Volume 57, Issue 4, Pages 466-+Publisher
CELL PRESS
DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2022.02.001
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Funding
- NIH [GM115185, GM056836, GM146438, GM132447, CA240765]
- American Cancer Society [RSG-19-073-01-TBE]
- Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Award
- Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
- JSPS KAKENHI [17H06471, 18KK0202]
- UK's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) [BB/R004803/1]
- ERC Consolidator Grant [771599]
- King's College London through a LIDo (London Interdisciplinary Doctoral programme) iCASE studentship
- European Research Council (ERC) [771599] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [18KK0202, 17H06471] Funding Source: KAKEN
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The concentration of the cytoplasm has a linear and inverse relationship with the rates of microtubule polymerization and depolymerization, indicating that changes in cytoplasmic viscosity play a key role in modulating these reactions.
The cytoplasm is a crowded, visco-elastic environment whose physical properties change according to physiological or developmental states. How the physical properties of the cytoplasm impact cellular functions in vivo remains poorly understood. Here, we probe the effects of cytoplasmic concentration on micro tubules by applying osmotic shifts to fission yeast, moss, and mammalian cells. We show that the rates of both microtubule polymerization and depolymerization scale linearly and inversely with cytoplasmic concentration; an increase in cytoplasmic concentration decreases the rates of microtubule polymerization and depolymerization proportionally, whereas a decrease in cytoplasmic concentration leads to the opposite. Numerous lines of evidence indicate that these effects are due to changes in cytoplasmic viscosity rather than cellular stress responses or macromolecular crowding per se. We reconstituted these effects on micro tubules in vitro by tuning viscosity. Our findings indicate that, even in normal conditions, the viscosity of the cytoplasm modulates the reactions that underlie microtubule dynamic behaviors.
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