Issues

Summary: This Perspective highlights potentials and challenges as well as insights from using actin and myosin in nanobiotechnological applications, such as biosensing and parallel computation.

Summary: Non-muscle myosin 2 functions broadly as the dominant contractile motor protein in most cells.

Summary: Kinesins can alter the microtubule track while they are walking on it. Thus, the microtubule is not simply a track for kinesin motility but a medium through which motors and microtubules can influence each other.

Summary: In this Review, we discuss recent studies to highlight what is known about the regulation of endosomal vesicle positioning and transport by motors and cargo adaptors.

Summary: The Review summarizes current knowledge about how dynein at the kinetochore contributes to efficient and accurate spindle assembly and describes the underlying molecular mechanisms.

Summary: KIF1A is a molecular motor that is essential for axonal transport and synaptogenesis. Here, we review research on disease-associated KIF1A mutations, which has revealed important properties of the KIF1A motor and its regulation.

Summary: Endosomal transport requires dynein and kinesin motors to associate with the endosomal membrane and the microtubule. We summarize the factors regulating these different interactions thereby tuning the fascinating endosomal dance.

Summary: Large cells often use the bulk movement of cytoplasm, known as cytoplasmic streaming, for intracellular transport. Here we describe how molecular motors and cytoskeletal tracks can generate streaming.

Summary: Myosin-X transports lamellipodin (RAPH1) to filopodia tips to regulate filopodia functions.

Summary: KIF13B moves in bursts within primary cilia of cultured human cells, providing the first evidence of intraciliary movement by a vertebrate kinesin other than kinesin-2 motors.

Summary: The fission yeast kinesin-5 motor Cut7 moves bidirectionally on spindles in cells and its activity increases at the onset of anaphase B.

Summary: Transcripts of genes regulating mitosis localize to the spindle in a manner dependent on microtubules, kinesin-1 and dynein. For Aurora B, this is dependent upon its 3′UTR and is essential for embryonic development.

Summary: StARD9 is a novel lysosomal kinesin that functions with genes implicated in Niemann–Pick type C disease to drive lysosomal tubulation. The loss of tubulation is proposed as a defect in Niemann–Pick type C disease.

Summary: Mitochondrial homeostasis requires regulated fission, which frequently occurs at mitochondria–ER contacts. Mitochondrially associated Myo19 binds ER-associated F-actin, tethering the organelles to promote fission.

Summary: FRAP and photoconversion experiments reveal that the motor protein Myosin II is preferentially recruited and stabilized at cell junctions during the formation of compartment boundaries in Drosophila.

Summary: The dynein-2 complex, a motor for retrograde protein trafficking within cilia, must be transported anterogradely as a cargo via extensive interactions of the dynein-2 complex with the IFT-B complex.

Summary: Lis1, which is mutated in the severe neurodevelopmental disease lissencephaly, promotes dynein-dependent corona disassembly and accurate microtubule attachment at kinetochores.

Summary: Disease-associated mutations in WDR34 are found to have diverse impacts on ciliogenesis and cilia function following stable expression in a WDR34-knockout cell model.

Summary: A new mouse model with a conditional deletion of dynein heavy chain 1 confirms that dynein has roles in axonal growth regulation, including axon length sensing, retrograde injury signaling and nerve regeneration.

Summary: Molecularly explicit simulations show that cofilin-mediated actin severing protects the fission yeast cytokinetic contractile ring from instabilities in which actin peels away into straight bridges.

Summary: The kinesin-1 motor mediates anterograde microtubule-based transport of the intracellular mature and enveloped forms of vaccinia virus in cells and in vitro.

Summary: An understudied kinesin, Kif9, is necessary for proximal to distal patterning of the motile cilium.

Summary: Mitosis-specific kinesin-8 Kif18b associates with kinesin-13 MCAK and the end-binding protein EB3, and promotes their accumulation at microtubule plus ends to increase microtubule catastrophe and reduce microtubule length.

Summary: A DNA molecule folded in a shape of a spring is used to measure forces generated by dynamic microtubule ends, and to record single-molecule fluorescence at the site of force generation.