Figure 1. Two Dimensional Microtubule Bundle (MTB) Model.

Microtubules are treated as rigid cylinders of diameter 25 nm (blue disks) with center-to-center distance of 45 nm (a). Taus are treated as springs, with 50 per micron length of a microtubule pair. To model tau depletion, taus are removed at random and the system is re-equilibrated with the steepest descents method described in the text (b).