Tubulin Beta 4 (TUBb4)

Tubulin is one of several members of a small family of globular proteins. The most common members of the tubulin family are α-tubulin and β-tubulin, the proteins that make up microtubules. Each has a molecular weight of approximately 55 kiloDaltons. Microtubules are assembled from dimers of α- and β-tubulin. These subunits are slightly acidic with an isoelectric point between 5.2 and 5.8. Hall et al. (1983) identified a beta-tubulin gene that they designated 5-beta. The 5-beta gene was expressed as a 2.6-kb transcript on Northern blots of HeLa cell mRNA. Lee et al. (1984) reported that the 5-beta sequence encodes a predicted 445-amino acid protein. Using Northern analysis, they determined that 5-beta is expressed in fetal brain, but not in cell lines derived from various other tissues.