F-actin

By Christina Towers, PhD.

Actin is a fundamental component of the cytoskeleton, where it has the ability to create and break down actin filament formation in response to various cell needs.  Actin has six highly conserved isoforms, however beta and gamma actin are the two isoforms that are highly and ubiquitously expressed in the cell.  For this reason, measuring beta-actin levels has served as a useful control in research experiments in order to have a baseline of protein expression to compare cell manipulations to.  However, beta actin has other implications in scientific research aside from acting