Studies On The Microtubular Cytoskeleton And Tubulins In Hypotrichous Ciliates

Studies on the eukaryotic cytoskeleton were important research of cell biology. The ciliates were always ideal materials in the studies of the structure and function of cytoskeleton and its cell control and adjustment, for they have many kinds of cytoskeletons with complexity and they could be easily cultured and handled. In the early 1980s, many researchers revealed the structure of cytoskeleton mainly on kinetosome in the cortex by the employment of protargol staining and ultrastructure method, and thus the configuration, development and mechanism of cortical ciliatures were discussed, which was the major tide in the studies of cell biology of protozoa. Since the 1990s, means of non-ionic detergentextraction combined with scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy in which microtubular structures can be stably conserved, antibodies to tubulins and corresponding immunofluorescent techniques, together with some molecular biological methods were used to display the morphology of the microtubular organelles and tubulins, in order to explore its functions and assembly mechanisms and a lot of data were accumulated and important progress was made. However, they are only limited to the kinetosome assembly of somatic ciliature which are scattered in Paramecium and Tetrahymena, while no profound researches have been made on different kind of ciliates, especially on those kinetosome tightly assembled, nor on the microtubule assembly and the nucleation and biogenesis of the microtubule in the cell. Thus, this paper aimed at the Hypotrichous ciliates which have the more complicated microtubular structures and the cortical ciliatures assemble tightly and three typical ciliates with complex differentiated microtubular structures were choosed as materials, that is, Euplotes sp., Stylonychia mytilus and Pseudourostyla sp. The formation and...