Abstract
Microtubules are electrically polar structures fulfilling prerequisites for generation of oscillatory electric field in the kHz to GHz region. Energy supply for excitation of elasto-electrical vibrations in microtubules may be provided from GTP-hydrolysis; motor protein-microtubule interactions; and energy efflux from mitochondria. It recently was determined from anisotropic elastic network modeling of entire microtubules that the frequencies of microtubule longitudinal axial eigenmodes lie in the region of tens of GHz for the physiologically common microtubule lengths. We calculated electric field generated by axial longitudinal vibration modes of microtubule, which model is based on subnanometer precision of charge distribution. Due to elastoelectric nature of the vibrations, the vibration wavelength is million-fold shorter than that of the electromagnetic field in free space and the electric field around the microtubule manifests rich spatial structure with multiple minima. The dielectrophoretic force exerted by electric field on the surrounding molecules will influence the kinetics of reactions via change in the probability of the transport of charge and mass particles. The electric field generated by vibrations of electrically polar cellular structures is expected to play a role in biological self-organization.
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