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Immunochemical determination of tubulin
Author(s) -
Illana Gozes,
Uriel Z. Littauer,
Benjamin Geiger,
Sara Fuchs
Publication year - 1977
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/0014-5793(77)80027-6
Subject(s) - citation , philosophy , combinatorics , microbiology and biotechnology , chemistry , library science , mathematics , biology , computer science
Tubulin, the subunit protein of microtubules is found in all eukaryotic cells. Microtubules are functionally important for a wide variety of cellular activities such as mitosis, cell shaping, secretion and motility. They are also abundant in the nervous tissue where neurite outgrowth as well as axoplasmic transport are thought to be dependent on microtubules integrity [l] . Detection and quantitation of tubulin is, thus, of importance in trying to understand differentiation processes. It has recently been shown that during postnatal development of the rat brain, there is a decline in the rate of tubulin synthesis as compared to that of the total protein (2-5). The decrease in the relative amounts of this protein occurs in the soluble fraction and is accompanied by a comparable decline in the percentage of its mRNA (3-5). The relative amounts of rat brain [2,5] or chick brain [6] iubulin have been determined by colchicine binding as well as by electrophoretic resolution on polyacrylamide gels followed by densitometric scanning of the stained gels. An alternative method is the detection and quantitation of tubulin by specific anti-tubulin antibodies, which allows a more sensitive assay as tubulin determinations can be carried out also on membrane bound protein not necessarily in its functional form. Specific tubulin antibodies have been used mainly for visualization of the mitotic spindle, as well as of the microtubular network in the cell [7,8] by immunofluorescence