Skip to main content
. 2013 Apr 2;104(7):1517–1528. doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2013.02.026

Figure 1.

Figure 1

GMPCPP dominates over Taxol in its effects on the mechanics of microtubules. (A) Histograms of data after log-transforming the persistence length clearly show differences between Taxol-stabilized microtubules (red bars), GMPCPP-stabilized microtubules (light blue bars), and microtubules doubly stabilized with GMPCPP and Taxol (dark blue bars). In particular, GMPCPP shifts the distribution to longer persistence lengths. We fit the data to Gaussian functions (Eq. 2) ); fit parameters are given in Table S1. (B) Normalized cumulative distributions of persistence length for Taxol-stabilized microtubules (red circles), GMPCPP-stabilized microtubules (light blue diamonds), and doubly stabilized microtubules (dark blue squares) display significant overlap between the sets of microtubules with GMPCPP, and distinct differences from the Taxol-only data. (C) We see no length dependence of the persistence lengths for Taxol-stabilized microtubules (red circles), GMPCPP-stabilized microtubules (light blue squares), or doubly stabilized microtubules (dark blue squares). Error bars represent the mean ± SE. The numbers of microtubules in each distribution are given in Table 1.