Figure 1. Tubulin-drug interactions.

(a) Crystal structure of taxol bound αβ-tubulin dimer (1JFF). The mutated residues are highlighted in yellow and the taxol/epothilone (ice blue) binding site is noted. A few functionally important loops, such as M, H6–H7, S9–S10 are labeled. The protein residues that involve in direct interactions with the drugs are shown in (b) and (c). Taxol (violet) and epothilone (yellow) are shown in licorice representations.