Posttranslational Modifications of Tubulin and Cilia
- 1Laboratory of Cytoskeleton and Cilia Biology, Department of Cell Biology, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Polish Academy of Sciences, 02-093 Warsaw, Poland
- 2Department of Cellular Biology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602
- Correspondence: dwloga{at}nencki.gov.pl; jgaertig{at}uga.edu
Abstract
Tubulin undergoes several highly conserved posttranslational modifications (PTMs) including acetylation, detyrosination, glutamylation, and glycylation. These PTMs accumulate on a subset of microtubules that are long-lived, including those in the basal bodies and axonemes. Tubulin PTMs are distributed nonuniformly. In the outer doublet microtubules of the axoneme, the B-tubules are highly enriched in the detyrosinated, polyglutamylated, and polyglycylated tubulin, whereas the A-tubules contain mostly unmodified tubulin. The nonuniform patterns of tubulin PTMs may functionalize microtubules in a position-dependent manner. Recent studies indicate that tubulin PTMs contribute to the assembly, disassembly, maintenance, and motility of cilia. In particular, tubulin glutamylation has emerged as a key PTM that affects ciliary motility through regulation of axonemal dynein arms and controls the stability and length of the axoneme.