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Engineering Approaches to Biomolecular Motors: From in vitro to in vivo Poster Abstracts
47
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.