To compare the long-term recovery of gene expression in dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons under conditions of regeneration vs. non-regeneration, Northern blotting and in situ hybridization were used to assess steady-state neurofilament (NF) and beta tubulin mRNA levels 12 weeks following axonal injury. Adult male rats sustained either a crush lesion of the mid-sciatic nerve (regeneration occur...

Tubulin is a GTPase that hydrolyzes its bound nucleotide triphosphate after it becomes incorporated into a microtubule. The only known consequence of nucleotide hydrolysis is that it increases the dissociation rate of tubulin from the end of the microtubule by 2 orders of magnitude. In this study, we investigated whether microtubules composed of tubulin-GMPCPP (guanylyl alpha,beta-methylenediph...

Benzimidazole anti-microtubule drugs, such as benomyl, induce paralysis and slow the growth of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. We have identified 28 mutations in C. elegans that confer resistance to benzimidazoles. All resistant mutations map to a single locus, ben-1. Virtually all these mutations are genetically dominant. Molecular cloning and DNA sequence analysis established that ben-1 ...

Trypanosome tubulin was purified to near homogeneity by chromatography on DEAE-Sephadex, Amicon filtration and assembly-disassembly in vitro. Polymerization of the tubulin in vitro yielded long, structurally normal, microtubules and some sheet structures on addition of GTP and incubation at 37 degrees C, in either the presence or the absence of Mg2+. Tubulin assembly was disrupted by glycerol a...

We describe the structure of a novel and unusually heterologous beta-tubulin isotype (M beta 1) isolated from a mouse bone marrow cDNA library, and a second isotype (M beta 3) isolated from a mouse testis cDNA library. Comparison of M beta 1 and M beta 3 with the completed (M beta 4, M beta 5) or extended (M beta 2) sequence of three previously described beta-tubulin isotypes shows that each in...

Previous studies have identified a conserved AG dinucleotide at the 3' splice site (3'SS) and a polypyrimidine (pPy) tract that are required for trans splicing of polycistronic pre-mRNAs in trypanosomatids. Furthermore, the pPy tract of the Trypanosoma brucei alpha-tubulin 3'SS region is required to specify accurate 3'-end formation of the upstream beta-tubulin gene and trans splicing of the do...

Tubulins contain a glycine-rich loop, that has been implicated in microtubule dynamics by means of an intramolecular interaction with the carboxy-terminal region. As a further extension of the analysis of the role of the carboxy-terminal region in tubulin folding we have mutated the glycine-rich loop of tubulin subunits. An alpha-tubulin point mutant with a T150-->G substitution (the correspond...

Purified brain tubulin subjected to an exhaustive phosphatase treatment can be rephosphorylated by casein kinase II. This phosphorylation takes place mainly on a serine residue, which has been located at the carboxy-terminal domain of the beta-subunit. Interestingly, tubulin phosphorylated by casein kinase II retains its ability to polymerize in accordance with descriptions by other authors of ...

Pulse-labeling studies demonstrate that tubulin synthesized in the neuron cell body (soma) moves somatofugally within the axon (at a rate of several millimeters per day) as a well-defined wave corresponding to the slow component of axonal transport. A major goal of the present study was to determine what proportion of the tubulin in mature motor axons is transported in this wave. Lumbar motor n...

The development of uninucleate amoebae into multinucleate plasmodia in myxomycetes is called the amoebal-plasmodial transition (APT). During the APT in Physarum polycephalum the ability to form flagellar axonemes is lost; the astral, open mitosis is replaced by the anastral, closed mitosis; and cytoskeletal microtubules disappear. These changes are accompanied by alterations in the repertoire o...