{"doi":"10.7554/elife.56547","title":"Growth cone-localized microtubule organizing center establishes microtubule orientation in dendrites","abstract":"A polarized arrangement of neuronal microtubule arrays is the foundation of membrane trafficking and subcellular compartmentalization. Conserved among both invertebrates and vertebrates, axons contain exclusively ‘plus-end-out’ microtubules while dendrites contain a high percentage of ‘minus-end-out’ microtubules, the origins of which have been a mystery. Here we show that in Caenorhabditis elegans the dendritic growth cone contains a non-centrosomal microtubule organizing center (MTOC), which generates minus-end-out microtubules along outgrowing dendrites and plus-end-out microtubules in the growth cone. RAB-11-positive endosomes accumulate in this region and co-migrate with the microtubule nucleation complex γ-TuRC. The MTOC tracks the extending growth cone by kinesin-1/UNC-116-mediated endosome movements on distal plus-end-out microtubules and dynein clusters this advancing MTOC. Critically, perturbation of the function or localization of the MTOC causes reversed microtubule polarity in dendrites. These findings unveil the endosome-localized dendritic MTOC as a critical organelle for establishing axon-dendrite polarity.","journal":"eLife","year":2020,"id":59726,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":65,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9559,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":314617,"name":"Marcela Kokes","orcid":"0000-0002-7218-481X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":314618,"name":"Richard D. Fetter","orcid":"0000-0002-1558-100X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":308275,"name":"Maria D. Sallee","orcid":"0000-0002-0144-2607","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":314619,"name":"Adrian W. Moore","orcid":"0000-0002-8242-301X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":308279,"name":"Jessica L. Feldman","orcid":"0000-0002-5210-5045","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":314620,"name":"Kang Shen","orcid":"0000-0003-4059-8249","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":314616,"name":"Xing Liang","orcid":"0000-0002-8298-1214","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":57,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:08:26.834549Z","pmid":"32657271","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}