Molecular Dynamics Calculations of the Electrostatic Properties of Tubulin and Their Consequences for Microtubules

crystallographic results were made available through the Protein Data Bank (PDB) (entries: ITUB and IJFF) which allowed us to view the 3D atomic resolution structure oftubulin. (seeFig. I) Each tubulin monomer is composed of more than 400 amino acids and, in spite of their similarity, slight folding differences can be seen. It is worth stressing that several different versions of both the {X-and 13-monomersexist and are called isotypes. [3]. The biophysical properties of these variants have been examined and are discussedbelow in this paper. Fig. 1 is diagram of the tubulin molecule produced from the Nogales et al. [2] crystallographic data (file IJFF) shows the similarity between the {X-subunit (left halt) and the 13-subunit(right halt). The white spheres indicate the location of GTP, GDP and taxol when bound. We present the results of molecular dynamics computations based on the atomic resolution structures of tubulin published as lTUB and IJFF in the Protein Data Bank. Values of net...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: ICMENS
• Authors: J. A. Tuszynski, E. J. Carpenter, E. Crawford, J. A. Brown, W. Malinski, J. M. Dixon
• Keywords: Atomic Resolution Structures, ICMENS 2003, Protein Data Bank, Tubulin