Is there any academic reference that shows α-tubulin is around 50-55 kDa? The only thing I found is some data sheets from companies. I need the real reference.
2 Answers
This is not so easy to answer, since alpha-tubulin has at 10 known genes in this family (data from Ensembl):
- TUBA1A tubulin, alpha 1a
- TUBA1B tubulin, alpha 1b
- TUBA3E tubulin, alpha 3e
- TUBA3D tubulin, alpha 3d
- TUBA4A tubulin, alpha 4a
- TUBAL3 tubulin, alpha-like 3
- TUBA1C tubulin, alpha 1c
- TUBA3C tubulin, alpha 3c
- TUBA8 tubulin, alpha 8
- TUBAL3 tubulin, alpha-like 3
You can go on the site linked above and choose any of the proteins. I checked TUBA1A, and get a length of 451 amino acids and a weight of approximately 50,1 kDa.
The paper titled Identification of α-tubulin as a granzyme B substrate during CTL-mediated apoptosis mentions it as 51KDa and the paper titled Carboxy-terminal amino acid sequence of α-tubulin from porcine brain mentions it as 55,000 Da. Hope that suffices.