21. Your co-worker in the lab carried out an experiment using microtubules and m

Question

21. Your co-worker in the lab carried out an experiment using microtubules and microtubule binding proteins. She used fluorescent microtubules polymerized in vitro and "factor X," a microtubule bi tein that she was trying to characterize. She since left the lab and you are trying to make sense of the nding pro notes in her lab notebook-but her notes are somewhat incomplete. You found the following figure in her notebook (below). From what you can deduce, it looks like she polymerized microtubules, and captured an image on the microscope before she added "factor X." Immediately after addition of "factor X", she captured another image (t-0), and A then another set of images at 30 sec and 60 sec post-addition of "factor X." Answer the questions below. Add factor 8 Add (1) What type of protein do you think Factor X is? factor t-30 s (2) Describe what Factor X is doing to the microtubules in Panel A. (3) Decribe what Factor X is doing to the microtubules in Panel B. (4) What do you think your former labmate did in "Experiment B" to produce the observed results? Give one possible explanation.

Explanation / Answer

1.I think factor X is microtubule-severing enzyme or agent.

2. in panel A, it severed the microtubule filaments, followed by depolymerization of tubulin subunits, resulting in loss of filament structure.

3. in panel B, it severed the microtubule filaments as in panel A. however, it was not able to depolarize the filaments into monomeric subunits.

4. my former labmate might have added GTP in panel B, so that polymerization occurred at one end to stabilize the filament.

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