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Compressive forces stabilize microtubules in living cells

Nature Materials volume 22, pages 913–924 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Microtubules are cytoskeleton components with unique mechanical and dynamic properties. They are rigid polymers that alternate phases of growth and shrinkage. Nonetheless, the cells can display a subset of stable microtubules, but it is unclear whether microtubule dynamics and mechanical properties are related. Recent in vitro studies suggest that microtubules have mechano-responsive properties, being able to stabilize their lattice by self-repair on physical damage. Here we study how microtubules respond to cycles of compressive forces in living cells and find that microtubules become distorted, less dynamic and more stable. This mechano-stabilization depends on CLASP2, which relocates from the end to the deformed shaft of microtubules. This process seems to be instrumental for cell migration in confined spaces. Overall, these results demonstrate that microtubules in living cells have mechano-responsive properties that allow them to resist and even counteract the forces to which they are subjected, being a central mediator of cellular mechano-responses.

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Fig. 1: MTs are deformed and stabilized in response to SCC in RPE1 cells.
Fig. 2: MTs are stabilized in response to SCC in enucleated RPE1 cells (cytoplasts).
Fig. 3: Characteristic timescales of MT mechano-stabilization.
Fig. 4: CLASP2 is enriched along the MT shaft in response to SCC.
Fig. 5: CLASP2 supports MT mechano-stabilization.
Fig. 6: Cell migration through constrictions depends on the mechano-stabilization of MTs.

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Data availability

Raw data are available from the corresponding authors upon request. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The computational code for image and data analysis is available via figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.22295881.v1.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the European Research Council (Consolidator Grant 771599 (ICEBERG) to M.T. and Advanced Grant 741773 (AAA) to L.B.), by the Bettencourt-Schueller Foundation, the Emergence program of the Ville de Paris and the Schlumberger Foundation for education and research. This project was also supported by the MuLife imaging facility, which is funded by GRAL, a program from the Chemistry Biology Health Graduate School of University Grenoble Alpes (ANR-17-EURE-0003). The work of D.M.R. and D.V. was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Health (R35GM136372). A.A. was supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) ECHO Grant 711.018.004. G.G. was supported by the INCA (AAP PLBIO no. 2020-109) and by the French National Research Agency (ANR-21-CE11-0004-01). M.D. was supported by the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale (SPF201809007121).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Univ. Paris, INSERM, CEA, UMRS1160, Institut de Recherche Saint Louis, CytoMorpho Lab, Hôpital Saint Louis, Paris, France

    Yuhui Li, Ondřej Kučera, Laurent Blanchoin & Manuel Théry

  2. Univ. Grenoble-Alpes, CEA, CNRS, INRA, Interdisciplinary Research Institute of Grenoble, Laboratoire de Phyiologie Cellulaire & Végétale, CytoMorpho Lab, Grenoble, France

    Yuhui Li, Ondřej Kučera, Laurent Blanchoin & Manuel Théry

  3. Department of Engineering Technology, South East Technological University, Waterford, Ireland

    Ondřej Kučera

  4. Institut Curie, UMR144, Paris, France

    Damien Cuvelier, Mathieu Deygas & Matthieu Piel

  5. Institut Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, Paris, France

    Damien Cuvelier, Mathieu Deygas & Matthieu Piel

  6. Sorbonne Université, F-75005, Paris, France

    Damien Cuvelier

  7. Department of Physics, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA

    David M. Rutkowski & Dimitrios Vavylonis

  8. Cell Biology, Neurobiology and Biophysics, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Dipti Rai, Tonja Pavlovič & Anna Akhmanova

  9. University Bordeaux, CNRS, Interdisciplinary Institute for Neuroscience, IINS, UMR 5297, Bordeaux, France

    Filipe Nunes Vicente & Grégory Giannone

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  1. Yuhui Li
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Contributions

Y.L., M.T. and L.B. conceived the study and designed the overall experiments. Y.L., D.R. and F.N.V. conducted the experiments. D.C., M.D., T.P., M.P., G.G., D.V. and A.A. provided the materials and shared the methods. Y.L., O.K. and D.M.R. analysed the data. Y.L., M.T. and L.B. wrote the Article. All the authors reviewed, edited and approved the paper.

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Correspondence to Laurent Blanchoin or Manuel Théry.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–10 and legends to Videos 1–5.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Video 1

Real-time capture of a 12-s-long 10% SCC. In most of our experiments in this study, the cells were subjected to 10 cycles.

Supplementary Video 2

RPE1 cells were transfected to express GFP-EB1. The cells were imaged on a spinning-disc confocal microscope with a ×63/1.4 objective. The images were taken every second for 2 min. The video is displayed at 20 images per second, that is, ×20 acceleration. The same cell was recorded before (left images) and after (right images) 12 SCC. The bottom images show the overlay of the top images to reveal the EB1 trajectories.

Supplementary Video 3

RPE1 cells were transfected to express GFP-EB3. The cells were imaged on a spinning-disc confocal video microscope with a ×63/1.4 objective. The images were taken every second for 4 min. The video is displayed at 15 images per second, that is, ×15 acceleration. The images are displayed with a cyan look-up table.

Supplementary Video 4

WT and CLASP2−/− cells were treated with SiR-tubulin to reveal MTs and imaged on a spinning-disc confocal video microscope with a ×63/1.4 objective. The images were taken every 15 s during 15 min. The video is displayed at 10 images per second, that is, ×150 acceleration.

Supplementary Video 5

WT and CLASP2−/− cells were treated with Hoechst to visualize their nuclei and imaged in transmitted light and with fluorescence excitation through a ×20 objective. The images were taken every 10 min for 12 h. The video is displayed at 10 images per second, that is, ×6,000 acceleration. The positions of the nuclei were tracked using a TrackMate plug-in for Fiji.

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Li, Y., Kučera, O., Cuvelier, D. et al. Compressive forces stabilize microtubules in living cells. Nat. Mater. 22, 913–924 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01578-1

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