In 1963, improved fixation methods led to the definitive identification of microtubules (see “Microtubules get a name” JCB. 168:852). Just one year later, Gary Borisy embarked on a daring project to isolate the main component of those microtubules.
The effort was initiated by Edwin Taylor at the University of Chicago. Taylor was interested in using colchicine to study mitosis. Unfortunately, “the literature on the effects of colchicine was very confused,” says Borisy. Colchicine was known to destroy the mitotic spindle but could also inhibit a disparate collection of other processes including distracting oddities such as cellulose deposition in plants.
Colchicine did, however, bind with high affinity and simple kinetics to cells, suggesting that isolation of a complex of colchicine with its binding protein(s) should be possible (Taylor, 1965). As a new graduate student in Taylor's lab, Borisy “got very excited” by the prospect of finding...
