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© The Rockefeller University Press, 0021-9525/1999//305 $5.00
The Journal of Cell Biology, Volume 145, Number 2, , 1999 305-315


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An Essential Role for Katanin in Severing Microtubules in the Neuron



Fridoon J. Ahmad*, Wenqian Yu*, Francis J. McNally{ddagger}, and Peter W. Baas*

* Department of Anatomy, The University of Wisconsin Medical School, Madison, Wisconsin 53706; and {ddagger} Section of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of California–Davis, Davis, California 95616

Several lines of evidence suggest that microtubules are nucleated at the neuronal centrosome, and then released for transport into axons and dendrites. Here we sought to determine whether the microtubule-severing protein known as katanin mediates microtubule release from the neuronal centrosome. Immunomicroscopic analyses on cultured sympathetic neurons show that katanin is present at the centrosome, but is also widely distributed throughout the neuron. Microinjection of an antibody that inactivates katanin results in a dramatic accumulation of microtubules at the centrosome, indicating that katanin is indeed required for microtubule release from the centrosome. However, the antibody also causes an inhibition of axon outgrowth that is more immediate than expected on this basis alone. It may be that katanin severs microtubules throughout the cell body to keep them sufficiently short to be efficiently transported into developing processes. Consistent with this idea, there were significantly fewer free ends of microtubules in the cell bodies of neurons that had been injected with the katanin antibody compared with controls. These results indicate that microtubule-severing by katanin is essential for releasing microtubules from the neuronal centrosome, and also for regulating the length of the microtubules after their release.

Key Words: katanin • microtubule • neuron • centrosome • axon



1. Abbreviation used in this paper: AFUs, arbitrary fluorescence units.



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