Mechanical fatigue in microtubules

Mechanical failure of biological nanostructures due to sustained force application has been studied in great detail. In contrast, fatigue failure arising from repeated application of subcritical stresses has received little attention despite its prominent role in engineering and potentially biology. Here, taxol-stabilized microtubules are up to 256 times bent into sinusoidal shapes of varying wavelength and the frequency of breaking events are observed. These experiments allow the calculation of fatigue life parameters for microtubules. Repeated buckling due to 12.5% compression – equal to the compression level experienced by microtubules in contracting cardiomyocytes – results in failure after in average 5 million cycles, whereas at 20% compression failure occurs after in average one thousand cycles. The fatigue strength (Basquin) exponent B is estimated as -0.06.