Analysis of a single soybean microtubule’s persistence length

In this study, we have reported for the first time the persistence length of a single soybean microtubule in vitro. The measurement is based on analysis of thermal bending of a single soybean microtubule. Similar to mammalian microtubules, the length dependency of the persistence length was also observed for this species of plant microtubule. The identification of two intrinsic aspects of plant microtubules: the persistence length and the compositional structure in terms of variety of beta tubulin isotypes, and the potential correlation between these two factors, provides evidence for the functionality mechanism of plant microtubules. In this work, these two fundamental factors have been further discussed for our case study: single soybean microtubule.