title: Comparison of the electrophoretic behaviour of tubulins from distantly related ciliates.
abstract: Differences in gel electrophoretic mobility were used to compare tubulin subunits from a variety of distantly related ciliate species. The relative electrophoretic mobility of ciliate tubulins is shown to vary depending upon the electrophoretic conditions used to separate them. Tubulin migration is altered by changing the pH of the separating gel: the positions of the tubulin subunits at pH 8.1 are apparently reversed when compared with their migration at pH 9.3. Examination of the tubulin electrophoretic behaviour reveals considerable differences among species of ciliates belonging to different taxonomic groups. Such an electrophoretic diversity is in good agreement with the large evolutionary distances within the phylum derived from rRNA sequence analyses. Our results allow us to group the ciliates analyzed in clusters which can be fitted quite satisfactorily into the traditional phylogenetic schemes.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Microbiología, Facultad de Biología, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Delgado
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fleury