A kinesin is a protein belonging to a class of motor proteins found in eukaryotic cells. Kinesins move along microtubule (MT) filaments and are powered by the hydrolysis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) (thus kinesins are ATPases, a type of enzyme). The active movement of kinesins supports several cellular functions including mitosis, meiosis and transport of cellular cargo, such as in axonal transport, and intraflagellar transport. Most kinesins walk towards the plus end of a microtubule, which, in most cells, entails transporting cargo such as protein and membrane components from the center of the cell towards the periphery. This form of transport is known as anterograde transport. In contrast, dyneins are motor proteins that move toward the minus end of a microtubule in retrograde transport.
The first kinesins to be discovered were microtubule-based anterograde intracellular transport motors in 1985, based on their motility in cytoplasm extruded from the giant axon of the squid.
The founding member of this superfamily, kinesin-1, was isolated as a heterotetrameric fast axonal organelle transport motor consisting of four parts: two identical motor subunits (called Kinesin Heavy Chain (KHC) molecules) and two other molecules each known as a Kinesin Light Chain (KLC). These were discovered via microtubule affinity purification from neuronal cell extracts. Subsequently, a different, heterotrimeric plus-end-directed MT-based motor named kinesin-2, consisting of two distinct KHC-related motor subunits and an accessory "KAP" subunit, was purified from echinoderm egg/embryo extracts and is best known for its role in transporting protein complexes (intraflagellar transport particles) along axonemes during ciliogenesis. Molecular genetic and genomic approaches have led to the recognition that the kinesins form a diverse superfamily of motors that are responsible for multiple intracellular motility events in eukaryotic cells. For example, the genomes of mammals encode more than 40 kinesin proteins, organized into at least 14 families named kinesin-1 through kinesin-14.
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Students will learn essentials of cell and developmental biology with an engineering mind set, with an emphasis on animal model systems and quantitative approaches.
Living organisms evolve in a physical world: their cells respond to mechanics, electricity and light. In this course, we will describe the behavior and function of cells using physical principles.
Motor proteins are a class of molecular motors that can move along the cytoplasm of cells. They convert chemical energy into mechanical work by the hydrolysis of ATP. Flagellar rotation, however, is powered by a proton pump. Motor proteins are the driving force behind most active transport of proteins and vesicles in the cytoplasm. Kinesins and cytoplasmic dyneins play essential roles in intracellular transport such as axonal transport and in the formation of the spindle apparatus and the separation of the chromosomes during mitosis and meiosis.
The eukaryotes constitute the domain of Eukaryota (juːˈkærioʊts,_-əts), organisms whose cells have a nucleus. All animals, plants, fungi, and many unicellular organisms are eukaryotes. They constitute a major group of life forms, alongside the two groups of prokaryotes, the Bacteria and the Archaea. Eukaryotes represent a small minority of the number of organisms, but due to their generally much larger size, their collective global biomass is much larger than that of prokaryotes.
Dyneins are a family of cytoskeletal motor proteins that move along microtubules in cells. They convert the chemical energy stored in ATP to mechanical work. Dynein transports various cellular cargos, provides forces and displacements important in mitosis, and drives the beat of eukaryotic cilia and flagella. All of these functions rely on dynein's ability to move towards the minus-end of the microtubules, known as retrograde transport; thus, they are called "minus-end directed motors".
Precise packaging of nanoliter amounts of liquid in a microsystem is important for many biomedical applications. However, existing liquid encapsulation technologies have limitations in terms of liquid waste, evaporation, trapped bubbles, and liquid degrada ...
2023
,
Networks of tryptophan (Trp)& horbar;an aromatic amino acid with strong fluorescence response & horbar;are ubiquitous in biological systems, forming diverse architectures in transmembrane proteins, cytoskeletal filaments, subneuronal elements, photorecepto ...
Amer Chemical Soc2024
The concomitant occurrence of tissue growth and organization is a hallmark of organismal development(1-3). This often means that proliferating and differentiating cells are found at the same time in a continuously changing tissue environment. How cells ada ...