Electrical Oscillations of Brain Microtubules

" Microtubules (MTs) are important cytoskeletal structures engaged in a number of specific cellular activities. Recent in vitro electrophysiological studies indicate that different brain MT structures, including two-dimensional sheets and bundles, generate highly synchronous electrical oscillations. However, no information has been heretofore available as to whether isolated MTs also engage in electrical oscillations. In the present study, a broader spectrum of fundamental frequencies was always observed in isolated MTs as compared to the MT sheets. This interesting finding is consistent with the possibility that more structured MT complexes (i.e. bundles, sheets) may render more coherent response at given oscillatory frequencies and raise the hypothesis that combined MTs may tend to oscillate and entrain together. The present study provides to our knowledge the first experimental evidence for electrical oscillations of single brain MTs." {Credits 1}

{Credits 1} 🎪 Gutierrez, B. C., Cantiello, H. F., & del Rocío Cantero, M. (2020). Electrical Oscillations of Brain Microtubules. bioRxiv. © 2020 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license..