Investigation of the Electrical Properties of Microtubule Ensembles under Cell-Like Conditions

" Addition of both MTs and tubulin generally led to an increase in solution resistance (figures 4a-f), with MTs having a higher resistance at low frequencies (1-20 Hz) compared to unpolymerised tubulin. Unexpectedly, a 'reversal' of this behaviour was observed at higher frequencies as MTs began to lower the solution resistance compared to tubulin (Figure 5b). The reversal took place gradually between 10 and 100 Hz (Figure 6a-d), with a peak between 20 and 60 Hz (Figure 6e). Interestingly, within this range, we also found that the addition of MTs lowered solution resistance compared to background buffer BRB80T.

... Our results are consistent with predictions of an increase in solution conductance an ~39 Hz [9.10], which have been hypothesised to arise from oscillatory ionic movement across the MT lattice through nanopores formed between adjacent tubulin dimers (Figure 9a).

It is worth nothing that this region falls within the gamma frequency regime (20-60 Hz), implicating such quasi-resonant phenomena as a possible explanation for the source of low frequency intraneuronal electrical oscillations." {Credits 1}

{Credits 1} 🎪 Kalra, A. P., Patel, S. D., Bhuiyan, A. F., Preto, J., Scheuer, K. G., Mohammed, U., ... & Tuszynski, J. A. (2020). Investigation of the Electrical Properties of Microtubule Ensembles under Cell-Like Conditions. Nanomaterials, 10(2), 265. © 2020 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0.