Alpha-tubulin belongs to the tubulin superfamily, which is composed of six distinct families. Along with beta-tubulins, alpha-tubulins are the major components of microtubules. These microtubules are involved in a wide variety of cellular activities ranging from mitosis and transport events to cell movement and the maintenance of cell shape. Alpha- and beta-tubulin dimers are assembled to 13 protofilaments that form a microtubule of 22-nm diameter (reviewed in 1). Tyrosine ligase adds a C-terminal tyrosine to monomeric alpha-tubulin. Assembled microtubules can again be detyrosinated by a cytoskeleton-associated carboxypeptidase (2). Another post-translational modification of detyrosinated alpha-tubulin is C-terminal polyglutamylation, which is characteristic of microtubules in neuronal cells and the mitotic spindle (3). Like GAPDH and ?-Actin, this antibody makes an excellent loading control in immunoblots.
