Gamma tubulin in plant cells

Abstract

Publisher Summary Substantial progress has been made in cloning of plant γ-tubulin genes and immunolocalization of γ-tubulin. This chapter describes microtubule arrays in plants and discusses the importance of γ-tubulin in plants. The chapter discusses methods for cloning γ-tubulin genes in plants and methods for localizing γ-tubulin in plant cells. In view of the importance of γ-tubulin in mitotic spindle formation in fungi and higher organisms, it is likely that γ-tubulin plays an important role in nucleation and organization of microtubule arrays in plants. A number of plant γ-tubulin cDNAs have been cloned and sequenced. The high degree of conservation of plant γ-tubulins makes cloning plant γ-tubulin genes and cDNAs relatively straightforward. One approach that has been successful is to use a γ-tubulin cDNA from another organism to probe a library at low stringency. A second approach has been to use the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to generate specific probes that can be used to probe libraries at high stringencies. This approach takes advantage of the fact that there are regions of γ-tubulin in which the amino acid sequence is highly conserved among phylogenetically diverse organisms.