The Journal of Cell Biology, Vol 82, 103-113, Copyright © 1979 by The Rockefeller University Press
Organization of tubulin in normal and transformed rat kidney cells
RW Rubin and RH Warren
We have carried out a quantitative biochemical and ultrastructural study of
tubulin and microtubules in a normal rat kidney (NRK) cell line and its
viral transformant (442) in culture. Under equivalent culture conditions,
both cell lines contain the same amount of tubulin according to a
colchicine-binding assay. The normal and transformed cells differ
significantly, however, with respect to the state of organization of their
tubulin. Counts of microtubules in sectioned cells indicate that NRK cells
have almost twice as many microtubules per unit area of cytoplasm as the
442 cells. Centrifugation studies, on the other hand, show that 442 cells
have almost twice as much pelletable tubulin as the NRK cells. We propose,
therefore, that the transformed cells contain a large amount of tubulin
which is in some alternative aggregate form that is not morphologically
detectable as microtubles in the cytoplasm
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