Figure 1.

AFM topography scans of desmin filaments under ambient conditions. a) Filaments assembled from wild-type proteins are several micrometers long and expose a vague right handed twist. b) Filaments assembled from mutated desmin protein (deletion mutation p.E114del, for details see [22]) are significantly shorter and show a completely different surface morphology. c) Assembly model of type II intermediate filaments [24]. Desmin monomers associate to parallel coiled coil dimers. Dimers form antiparallel tetramers which assemble to unit length filaments (ULF). Filaments elongate by longitudinal assembly of ULF.