Electric field generated by longitudinal axial microtubule vibration modes with high spatial resolution microtubule model

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.