Archive Deciphering the amino acid sequence of all-important subcellular structures called microtubules took seven years. Researchers believe that new imaging processes from the Alliance will speed up the next stage of their research.
Microtubules are among the most important structures in living things.
They form the skeleton that gives a cell its shape and provide the equivalent of rail transport used to move materials from place to place. And, before a cell divides, hundreds of these flexible tubes assemble, seemingly out of nowhere, at opposite ends to pull the chromosomes apart. Their role in cell division makes them a prime target for cancer-fighting drugs. However, nobody knew what these microtubules looked like on a molecular level nor how the popular anticancer drug taxol makes the normally flexible microtubules rigid, stopping cell division in its tracks. Nobody knew, that is, until Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's biophysicist Kenneth Downing and his colleagues Eva Nogales and Sharon Wolf revealed the 3D structure of the protein from which microtubules are composed.