Novel components of the plant cytoskeleton: a beginning to plant 'cytomics'

The bulk of our knowledge concerning the plant cytoskeleton has come primar ily from the use of techniques and probes derived from animal research. How ever, in comparison with animal tissues, relatively few plant cytoskeleton proteins have been identified. We presume this is not because the plant cyt oskeleton is really made up of such few proteins, but rather that only rare ly have attempts been made to identify plant-specific cytoskeleton proteins , using plant-specific methods. Here we outline methods that we have develo ped both for the isolation and identification of novel cytoskeleton protein s as well as for the visualization of novel filamentous structures in plant cells, and we describe several novel cytoskeleton proteins and two novel c ytoskeleton structures, 'nanofilaments' and 'nanotubules'. We postulate tha t use of such approaches will lead to a rapid expansion of our knowledge of the plant cytoskeleton. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.