Fig. 2.

Bioinformatic analysis of the novel mutation. a Glu108 is conserved in TUBB8. The glutamic acid at the 108th position is highly conserved among Homo sapiens, Pan troglodytes, Pan paniscus, Gorilla gorilla, Papio hamadryas, Papio anubis, and Macaca fascicularis. b The overall structure of an α/β tubulin heterodimer. The α-tubulin and β-tubulin are displayed as orange and gray cartoons, whereas the E108 of β-tubulin and the K163 of α-tubulin are shown as green and yellow sticks, respectively. c The electrostatic potential surface of α-tubulin together with its interaction with wild-type (left) and E108K mutant (right) β-tubulin. The positive- and negative-charged regions of α-tubulin are colored blue and red, respectively. E108 and K108 are shown as cartoon and sticks. Structure display and electrostatic potential surface generation were performed by PyMOL (http://www.pymol.org/)