STOP proteins.

Microtubules assembled from purified tubulin in vitro are labile, rapidly disassembling when exposed to a variety of depolymerizing conditions such as cold temperature. In contrast, in many cell types, microtubules seem to be unaffected when the cell is exposed to the cold. This resistance of microtubules to the cold has been intriguing because the earliest and by far most studied microtubule-associated proteins such as MAP2 and tau are devoid of microtubule cold stabilizing activity. Over the p...