Nandini Shekhar, of BME Affiliate Dr. Tanmay Lele’s lab, has her work featured as one of four most outstanding cellular and molecular bioengineering papers at the 2013 BMES meeting. Her paper titled “Fluctuating Motor Forces Bend Growing Microtubules” investigates the mechanisms by which microtubules bend in fibroblast cells. Lab members found that bending was driven largely by dynein motors, rather than myosin motors. Because microtubules play a vital role in cell polarization and cytoplasmic organization, the findings suggest that the organization of the microtubule array in interphase cells will be controlled by microtubule-dependent motors rather than the actin cortex. The paper was published in a special issue of Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering, a journal of the Biomedical Engineering Society.