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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2008 Sep 4.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Biol. 2007 Aug 2;17(17):1445–1455. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2007.07.011

Figure 2.

Figure 2

Simulation of microtubule assembly at the nanoscale. At time (A), the microtubule tip has a multiprotofilament extension with a relatively long and spatially-distributed GTP cap (magenta) of 35 subunits on average. The leading protofilaments then depolymerize and recap, resulting in a growth-phase shortening event, as shown in (B). Note that the GTP cap remains intact, never being less than 20 GTP-tubulin subunits during the shortening phase. Subsequently, the microtubule polymer continues growth, as shown in (C). Catastrophe occurs after 10 sec, as shown in (D-E), at which point the GTP cap has only 3 subunits on average.