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Microtubules are cytoskeletal protein polymers orchestrating a host of important cellular functions including, but not limited to, cell support, cell division, cell motility and cell transport. It has also been postulated that microtubules may be involved in information processing inside the brain. In this talk, I present a toy-model of the microtubule lattice composed of Ising-like spins representing tubulin molecules, the building blocks of microtubules. I show that under certain conditions, the lattice displays the remarkable property of stabilizing certain spin patterns at human physiological temperatures. This suggests a novel biological mechanism for storing information in living organisms, whereby the tubulin spin (dipole moment) states become information bits and information gets stored in microtubules in a way that is robust to thermal fluctuations. |