Secondary Structure Changes of Tubulin Induced by Navelbine as Studied by FT-IR

Navelbine, is an antitumoral vincaalkaloid that is known to depolymerize the microtubules network (Binet et al., 1989). FT-IR spectroscopy has been applied to the evaluation of the changes of the secondary structure of purified tubulin induced by Navelbine. The secondary structure content of tubulin was predicted from amide I and II bands by the partial least-squares method. On the first stage, spectra of 11 proteins with known crystal structure have been recorded. This set of protein spectra was then employed as reference to estimate the secondary structure of tubulin.