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Motor proteins

Kinesin's gait captured

Nature Chemical Biology volume 12, pages 206–207 (2016)Cite this article

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Kinesin is a motor protein that drives intracellular transport by stepping along microtubules in a hand-over-hand manner. Advanced dark-field microscopy has made it possible to capture the gait of this motor with unprecedented resolution.

Kinesins drive intracellular transport by converting chemical energy into mechanical work2. The prototypical kinesin, Kinesin-1, transports vesicles and organelles in axons by stepping along microtubules toward the axon terminal at a velocity of ∼1 μm s−1. Kinesin-1 is a processive motor that makes hundreds of ∼8-nm steps along the microtubule lattice before releasing3. The protein consists of two identical heads that are connected to a long stalk, and cargo binds to the end of the stalk4 (Fig. 1). The hydrolysis of ATP in each head is tightly coupled to the binding and unbinding of the head to the microtubule, and the connections between heads and stalk (the so-called neck linkers)4. Kinesin-1 moves by subsequent hand-over-hand stepping of the heads5. States in which both leading and trailing heads are bound to the microtubule are connected by the actual step, during which the trailing head swings ∼16 nm forward to the next binding site while the leading head remains bound (Fig. 1). However, it has so far not been possible to directly show whether a Kinesin-1 step is a single event or involves sub-steps.

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Figure 1: The gate of Kinesin-1 captured.

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  1. Erwin J.G. Peterman is at the Department of Physics & Astronomy and LaserLaB, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.,

    Erwin J G Peterman

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  1. Erwin J G Peterman
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Correspondence to Erwin J G Peterman.

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The author declares no competing financial interests.

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Peterman, E. Kinesin's gait captured. Nat Chem Biol 12, 206–207 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.2038

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