The relevance of neck linker docking in the motility of kinesin.
Conventional kinesin is a motor protein, which is able to walk along a microtubule processively. The exact mechanism of the stepping motion and force generation of kinesin is still far from clear. In this paper we argue that neck linker docking is a crucial element of this mechanism, without which the experimentally observed dwell times of the steps could not be explained under a wide range of loading forces. We also show that the experimental data impose very strict constraints on the lengths of both the neck linker and its docking section, which are compatible with the known structure of kinesin.
Czövek
András
A
Department of Biological Physics, Eötvös University, Pázmány P. stny. 1A, H-1117 Budapest, Hungary.
Szöllosi
Gergely J
GJ
Derényi
Imre
I
D016547:Kinesins / Q000378:metabolism*; D008954:Models, Biological; D009068:Movement; D011336:Probability
D016547:Kinesins