Zinc-induced tubulin sheets

Figure 7-33 Stereoscopic ribbon diagram of the tubulin dimer with a-tubulin with bound GTP at the top and P-tubulin with bound GDP at the bottom. The p-tubulin subunit also contains a bound molecule of taxotere (see Box 7-D) which is labeled TAX. This model is based upon electron crystallography of zinc-induced tubulin sheets at 0.37-nm resolution and is thought to approximate closely the packing of the tubulin monomers in microtubules.315 The arrow at the left points toward the plus end of the microtubule. Courtesy of Kenneth H. Downing.

Based on the structure of ap-tubulin dimer, resolved by electron crystallography of zinc-induced tubulin sheets, a previously unrecognised... 

The atomic structure of tubulin protofilaments (Figs. 3 and 4) is known from 3.5 A resolution maps, the first of which came from electron crystallography of zinc-induced 2D sheets (Nogales et al., 1998b), subsequently refined (Lowe et al., 2001). Recent data, including important information... 

Fig. 2 Ribbon diagram of the structure of the a/p-tubulin dimer in 2D zinc-induced sheets (PDB entry 1TUB). The p monomer is on top. Some elements involved in PTX binding and lateral contacts are colored M loop in green, S9-S10 loop in blue, helix H7 in yellow, and helix H3 in orange. Small-molecule ligands are represented as sticks PTX in red, GDP and GTP in magenta. The a-tubulin S9-S10 loop occupies a position equivalent to that of PTX in P-tubulin...

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