Libusová L, Dráber P
Department of Animal Physiology and Developmental Biology, Faculty of Sciences, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
Protoplasma. 2006 May;227(2-4):65-76. doi: 10.1007/s00709-005-0152-0. Epub 2006 May 30.
Tetrahymena and Paramecium species are widely used representatives of the phylum Ciliata. Ciliates are particularly suitable model organisms for studying the functional heterogeneity of tubulins, since they provide a wide range of different microtubular structures in a single cell. Sequencing projects of the genomes of members of these two genera are in progress. Nearly all members of the tubulin superfamily (alpha-, beta-, gamma-, delta-, epsilon-, eta-, theta-, iota-, and kappa-tubulins) have been identified in Paramecium tetraurelia. In Tetrahymena spp., the functional consequences of different posttranslational tubulin modifications (acetylation, tyrosination and detyrosination, phosphorylation, glutamylation, and glycylation) have been studied by different approaches. These model organisms provide the opportunity to determine the function of tubulins found in ciliates, as well as in humans, but absent in some other model organisms. They also give us an opportunity to explore the mechanisms underlying microtubule diversity. Here we review current knowledge concerning the diversity of microtubular structures, tubulin genes, and posttranslational modifications in Tetrahymena and Paramecium species.
四膜虫和草履虫是纤毛门广泛使用的代表物种。纤毛虫是研究微管蛋白功能异质性特别合适的模式生物，因为它们在单个细胞中提供了广泛的不同微管结构。这两个属成员的基因组测序项目正在进行中。在四膜虫中几乎已经鉴定出微管蛋白超家族的所有成员（α-、β-、γ-、δ-、ε-、η-、θ-、ι-和κ-微管蛋白）。在四膜虫属中，已经通过不同方法研究了不同翻译后微管蛋白修饰（乙酰化、酪氨酸化和去酪氨酸化、磷酸化、谷氨酰胺化和糖基化）的功能后果。这些模式生物提供了确定在纤毛虫以及人类中发现但在其他一些模式生物中不存在的微管蛋白功能的机会。它们也让我们有机会探索微管多样性背后的机制。在这里，我们综述了关于四膜虫和草履虫物种中微管结构、微管蛋白基因和翻译后修饰多样性的现有知识。
