CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Neurons are born symmetrical with many undifferentiated and highly dynamic minor processes called neurites. Within time these cells develop a single thin and long axon which transmit information and several shorter dendrites that receive signal inputs in an event known as symmetry breaking. In this work I show how microtubules intrinsic dynamics, that is growth phases of tubulin assembly briefly interrupted by fast microtubule depolymerization, can be responsible for the neurites behavior until a neuron reaches a mature polarized morphology in a winner-takes-all fashion. Experimental data from microtubule dynamics were set in a series of ordinary differential equations. Some simulations will be compared with measured growth dynamics of a neuron?s neurites.