Cell Motors Keep on Truckin' (IMAGE)
Caption
This artist's conception -- which will be the cover art for the April 16 issue of the journal Cell -- shows three molecular motors that help move cells and things inside them. The details of how such motors work are outlined in a new study by University of Utah biophysicist Michael Vershinin and colleagues in California and New York. Each motor, a protein named dynein, looks like a pair of doughnuts with legs. The first two motors have two other proteins attached to them: LIS1, which looks like a pair of olives, and NudE, which looks like a rope or leash holding the LIS1 "olives" to the dynein molecule. Because the first two motors have the two other proteins attached, they are strong enough to move along a microtubule, essentially a "road" within the cell (extending from center bottom to center right in the illustration). But the third motor lacks the other two proteins, and thus is unable to stay on the "road" or move bigger objects.
Credit
For Cell by David Meikle, University of Utah.
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