Buckling and force propagation along intracellular microtubules

¹  Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vrije Universiteit - Amsterdam, The Netherlands, EU
²  The Aspen Center for Physics - Aspen, CO 81611, USA
³  Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and University of California - Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA California Nanosystems Institute, University of California - Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA

Corresponding author: mdas@few.vu.nl

Received: 18 April 2008
Accepted: 27 August 2008

Abstract

Motivated by recent experiments showing the compressive buckling of microtubules in cells, we study theoretically the mechanical response of and force propagation along elastic filaments embedded in a non-linear elastic medium. We find that embedded microtubules buckle when their compressive load exceeds a critical value f_c, and that the resulting deformation is restricted to a penetration depth that depends on both the non-linear material properties of the surrounding cytoskeleton, as well as the direct coupling of the microtubule to the cytoskeleton. The deformation amplitude depends on the applied load as . This work shows how the range of compressive force transmission by microtubules can be tens of microns and is governed by the mechanical coupling to the surrounding cytoskeleton.