Although it is now apparent that the intracellular pH may rise considerably above neutrality under physiological conditions, information on the effect of alkaline pH on microtubule assembly and disassembly is still quite fragmentay. We have studied the assembly/disassembly of bovine brain microtubule protein at alkaline pH in vitro. When microtubules are assembled to a new steady state at pH le...

Disassembly of the nuclear lamina is a key step during open mitosis in higher eukaryotes. The activity of several kinases, including CDK1 (cyclin-dependent kinase 1) and protein kinase C (PKC), has been shown to trigger mitotic lamin disassembly, yet their precise contributions are unclear. In this study, we develop a quantitative imaging assay to study mitotic lamin B1 disassembly in living ce...

Turnover of actin filaments in cells requires rapid actin disassembly in a cytoplasmic environment that thermodynamically favors assembly because of high concentrations of polymerizable monomers. We here image the disassembly of single actin filaments by cofilin, coronin, and actin-interacting protein 1, a purified protein system that reconstitutes rapid, monomer-insensitive disassembly (Briehe...

Sampling-based path planning algorithms are powerful tools for computing disassembly motions. This paper presents a variant of the RRT algorithm particularly devised for the disassembly of objects with articulated parts. Configuration parameters generally play two different roles in this type of problems: some of them are essential for the disassembly task, while others only need to move if the...

An important aspect in recycling and reuse for environmentally conscious manufacturing is disassembly. Although disassembly systems contain the same basic elements as assembly system, the disassembly problem differs significantly from the assembly problem due to the fact that the incoming disassembly product is not controlled. In addition, complete dismantling of products is not necessarily req...

Environmental protection legislation, consumer interest in “green” products, a trend toward corporate responsibility and recognition of the potential profitability of salvaging operations, has resulted in increased interest in product take back. However, the cost effectiveness of product take-back operations is hampered by many factors, including the high cost of disassembly and a widely varyin...

Disassembly activities take place in various recovery operations including remanufacturing, recycling and disposal. The disassembly line is the best choice for automated disassembly of returned products. It is therefore important that the disassembly line be designed and balanced so that it works as efficiently as possible. The disassembly line balancing problem seeks a sequence which: is feasi...

Calcium ion induces rapid depolymerization of microtubules, and the mechanism of interaction of Ca2+ with cytoskeletal components may be metabolically significant. The sufficiency of an endwise depolymerization model for describing calcium-induced disassembly was demonstrated by three criteria: (a) correlation of the observed time course of disassembly with the initial polymer length distributi...

Disassembly lines are the best way to disassemble products with similar components in large quantities. A disassembly line consists of a series of workstations. However, unlike their assembly counterpart, disassembly lines are affected by factors such as multiple component demand arrivals and end-of-life (EOL) product arrivals, uncertainty in EOL product and component demand arrivals and varyin...