Speaker
Description
Neurons are specialized cells which transmit signals and move biological material across their axons and dendrites. The fundamental organization of neurons relies on microtubules (MTs) which are elongated protein polymers with a plus and minus end. These MTs form tracks on which cargo can be transported within the cell. It is well known that dendritic MTs are extremely dynamic, reorganize rapidly, and have mixed polarity where plus ends may point in opposing directions. Despite this, the long arrays formed by MTs are highly stable structures. Our group has developed a stochastic and spatial model which tracks individual MTs throughout time in a linear region of a dendrite and predicts the overall behavior. We carried out sensitivity analysis of the model to understand how key parameters such as number of MTs, length between branches, and MT length impacted the establishment and maintenance of biased polarity. We have preliminary results which extend our 1D model to include dendritic branches and thus incorporating the contribution of additional biological mechanisms. These results suggest that MT content depletes in the absence of ample nucleation sites, which is informing our collaborators’ experimental work and our recent updates to the 2-dimensional spatial model.
