Engineering Approaches to Biomolecular Motors

Engineering Approaches to Biomolecular Motors: From in vitro to in vivo Poster Abstracts

17-POS Board 17 Teams of Kinesin-1 Motors are Slowed Down by Macromolecular Crowding Guilherme Nettesheim 2 , Gabriel Jaffe 2 , Stephen J. King 3 , George T. Shubeita 1,2 . 1 New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 2 The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA, 3 University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA. The cytosol is crowded by a high concentration of macromolecules. Crowding can alter protein conformation, binding rates, and reaction kinetics, yet it is not known how crowding affects cargo transport by molecular motors. Here, we report on experiments in which we mimicked cellular crowding in vitro to study its consequences on cargo transport by kinesin-1 motors. Surprisingly, we find that crowding alters transport by teams of motors more dramatically than it does single motors. A mechanistic model supported by experiments allows us to reconcile this unexpected finding with the properties of the single motor.

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