The dynamic behavior of microtubules in solution can be strongly modified by interactions with walls or other structures. We examine here a microtubule growth model where the increase in size of the plus-end is perturbed by collisions with other microtubules.We show that such a simple
mechanism of constrained growth can induce ordered structures and patterns from an initially isotropic and homogeneous suspension. We find that
microtubules self-organize locally in randomly oriented domains that grow and compete with each other. Aweak orientation bias, similar to the one
induced by gravity or cellular boundaries is enough to influence the domain growth direction, eventually leading to a macroscopic sample orientation.