About this Research Topic
The goal of this collection is to assess current support for the above hypotheses, including functional differences between α, β, and γ tubulin isotype proteins and the roles of isotype expression in metazoan development and disease. We seek to highlight new insights into tubulin isotypes and to bring attention to remaining challenges and unanswered questions including specificity and selectivity of small molecules with respect to their affinity for tubulin isotypes. Answering some of these basic science questions may help in the design and development of more efficacious chemotherapy agents.
We seek research articles, reviews and manuscripts describing novel methods related to the following:
1) Describe the molecular diversity of α, β, and γ tubulin isotypes across eukaryotic evolution, and highlight structural features that promote differences in biochemical activity and function.
2) Review our current understanding of isotype conservation across species, and cell-type and developmental expression.
3) Present new research that advances our understanding of the roles of α, β, and γ tubulin isotypes in organisms.
4) Identify important frontiers in the field of tubulin isotypes.
5) Discuss the differences in the mechanisms of binding to tubulin isotypes by various classes of small molecule compounds, both standard and novel, which can be used as anti-mitotic agents.
Keywords: cytoskeleton, microtubule, tubulin, mitosis, brain development
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