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Protein transport

Molecular motors join forces

Nature volume 397, pages 204–205 (1999)Cite this article

The apples you buy at the grocery will usually have completed a long journey, including shipment from the farmer to your home town then delivery to the grocer. Different modes of transport may have been used, such as a train for the long haul and a van for the local dispatch, and the legs of this voyage are coordinated by closely interacting business partners. Similarly, animal cells may use different transport systems to deliver membrane-bound components, such as secretory vesicles, from the site at which they're packaged in the centre of the cell to their destination at its periphery. Long-range movements are carried out by molecular motors (‘trains’), using microtubules as their tracks. Often, however, microtubules do not reach the plasma membrane, and a different set of motors (‘vans’) carry out the last leg. These motors move on actin filaments, so they can traverse the actin-rich cell cortex.

Conventional kinesin (the prototype of the growing kinesin superfamily) is believed to be involved in many forms of microtubule-mediated vesicle and organelle transport2. Myosin V is one of at least a dozen classes of unconventional (that is, non-filamentous) myosins that move on actin filaments3. Analyses of myosin V mutants in organisms as divergent as yeast and mouse indicate that these myosins are also organelle motors. For example, mice with defects in the dilute locus, which encodes myosin Va, have a washed-out (‘diluted’) coat colour. This is because the transfer of pigment organelles (melanosomes) from melanocytes to the skin cells involved in hair formation is compromised, so melanosome transport is thought4 to be mediated by myosin Va.

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Figure 1: Vesicle transport in the cell by a bifunctional vehicle.

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  1. the Adolf-Butenandt-Institut, Zellbiologie, University of Munich, Schillerstrasse 42, 80336, Munich, Germany

    Manfred Schliwa

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  1. Manfred Schliwa
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Schliwa, M. Molecular motors join forces. Nature 397, 204–205 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/16577

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