Analyzing the Frequency of Thermally Fluctuating Segments of Microtubules

Abstract

Taxol is a drug used to treat cancer by stabilizing microtubules. The purpose of this research is to understand and explain how Taxol stabilizes microtubules and build a foundation upon which new discoveries involving cancer research can be made. We analyzed if Taxol affects the vibrational modes of microtubules by determining a frequency of Taxol-stabilized microtubules. Microtubules are grown, imaged, and analyzed by measuring the change of angle in radians of the end segments at 83ms intervals. The results depicted a sinusoidal movement of the end segment of the microtubule. From this, we found the resonant frequency by taking the Fourier Transform of the data and analyzing where the maximum peak occurred. The smaller peaks in the transform may be a result of the surrounding solution or internal fluctuations of the microtubule. We interpreted a 10.2 µm microtubule to have a frequency of 0.96 Hz. The process is repeated with microtubules of similar lengths, incubated with Taxol. We compared the resonant frequencies of the various lengths of microtubules and observed that there is a relationship between the length of a microtubule and its fundamental resonant frequency. The trend shows that as length of a microtubule increases, the fundamental frequency decreases.