Issues

The cover image shows microtubule catastrophe, the moment at which the polymer begins to fall apart by outward peeling of longitudinally connected stretches of tubulin, known as protofilaments. This mode of depolymerisation has long been observed thanks to nanometre-scale electron microscopy, but it lacked mechanistic explanation. Recent work addressed the structural basis of microtubule dynamic instability using cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) at near-atomic resolution. This and other major insights into microtubule biology revealed by cryo-EM are reviewed by Manka and Moores in this issue (see pages 737–751). The atomic surface model was created in ChimeraX using experimentally determined tubulin conformations and was kindly provided by Szymon Manka (Birkbeck, University of London).