{"id":8910,"date":"2018-03-14T17:12:03","date_gmt":"2018-03-15T00:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/impact\/?p=8910"},"modified":"2018-03-15T18:05:14","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T01:05:14","slug":"biophysicist-solves-molecular-motor-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/impact\/2018\/03\/biophysicist-solves-molecular-motor-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"Biophysicist solves molecular motor mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"

A research team led by biophysicist Weihong Qiu<\/a>\u00a0in our Department of Physics and a plant biologist from the University of California, Davis have discovered a novel motor protein that significantly expands current understanding of the evolution and design principle of motor proteins.<\/p>\n

The findings were published today in Nature Communications<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Using an analogy to a metropolitan city, the interior of eukaryotic cells contain a railway-like structure called the cytoskeleton and tiny vehicles called motor proteins. Motor proteins act on the cytoskeleton tracks to generate forces and directional movement for many essential processes, such as transportation of cellular \u201ccargoes\u201d and separation of duplicated chromosomes during cell division.<\/p>\n

Cells from human, animals and fungi all have three different types of motor proteins that scientists refer to as myosin, kinesin and dynein. Kinesin and dynein move on the same cytoskeleton track and normally in opposite directions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019ve found is the first kinesin-14 motor from land plants that has the ability to move continuously on the cytoskeleton track on its own,\u201d said Qiu.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cKinesin-14s \u2013 a subset of kinesin motors \u2013 have the same directional preference as the dynein motor,\u201d he said. \u201cHowever, dynein ends up being a major motor protein in that direction because kinesin-14 motors lack the ability of dynein to generate persistent motility on the cytoskeleton track.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scientists have long speculated that land plants might have evolved into unconventional kinesin-14s that have the ability to generate persistent motility on their own. Land plants do not have dynein. But they have many kinesin-14 motors, said Qiu.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
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Driven by that, researchers explored land plants, trying to find some novel kinesin-14s that could potentially compensate for the loss of dynein in land plants.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis work is an important discovery in the field of biological motors in recent years,\u201d said Qiu, whose work examined at Oryza sativa, <\/em>most often referred to simply as rice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThis expands our knowledge of the design and operation principles of molecular motors,\u201d he said. \u201cLand plants offer a rich source for us to understand the entire evolution of these molecular motors. And some land plants, if not all, have evolved novel kinesin-14 motors to potentially compensate for the loss of dynein.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collaborating with Qiu and Liu on the research were Kuo-Fu Tseng and Allison Gicking of the OSU Department of Physics; Joel Bowen of the OSU Department of Mathematics; Yuh-Ru Julie Lee of UC Davis; and Pan Wang and Lijun Guo of Henan University, China.<\/p>\n

The National Science Foundation supported the research.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Biophysicists discover a motor protein that expands understanding of the evolution and design principle of motor proteins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6617,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[656646,1507,7519,523],"tags":[648365,1320,1729,37185],"class_list":["post-8910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-faculty-and-staff","category-ph","category-research","tag-author-srila-nayak","tag-environment","tag-healthy-planet","tag-stem"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6vHeb-2jI","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9825,"url":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/impact\/2018\/07\/solved-protein-puzzle-opens-doors-to-new-designs-for-cancer-drugs\/","url_meta":{"origin":8910,"position":0},"title":"Solved 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