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Updated: Jul 2, 2026

Directly Measuring Forces Within Reconstituted Active Microtubule Bundles
Published on: May 10, 2022
Effective potential of longitudinal interactions between microtubule protofilaments
M Neek-Amal1, N Hamedani Radja, M R Ejtehadi
1School of Nano, Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, PO Box 19395-5531, Tehran, Iran. neek@nano.ipm.ac.ir
Abstract:
An effective potential for longitudinal interactions between adjacent protofilaments in a microtubule is introduced. Our proposed interaction potential is a periodic and continuous function of the offset between two protofilaments, which also incorporates the bending energy of protofilaments. This potential produces the results of atomistic simulations. Further, using the potential, a Monte Carlo simulation gives results for the skew angles of observed structures that are in good agreement with experiments.
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