Measuring microtubule growth and gliding in Caenorhabditis elegans embryos

Microtubule plus-tip tracking is a powerful method to measure microtubule growth dynamics in vivo. Here we outline an approach that exploits live confocal microscopy of a GFP-tagged EB1-like protein to measure microtubule growth behavior and minus-end-directed microtubule motor activity at the cortex of Caenorhabditis elegans embryos. The EB1 velocity assay (EVA) provides a method to reproducibly monitor motor- and non-motor-assisted microtubule movements.