A New Cooperation Mechanism of Kinesin Motors when Extracting Membrane Tube

Membrane tubes are important functional elements for riving cells. Experiments have found that membrane tubes can be extracted from giant lipid vesicles by groups of kinesin. How these motors cooperate in extracting the membrane tube is a very important issue but still unclear so far. In this paper, we propose a cooperation mechanism called two-track-dumbbell model, in which kinesin is regarded as a dumbbell with an end （tail domain） tethered on the fluid-like membrane and the other end （head domain） stepping on the microtubule. Taking account of the elasticity of kinesin molecule and the excluded volume effect of both the head domain and the tail domain of kinesin, which are not considered in previous models, we simulate the growth process of the membrane tube pulled by kinesin motors. Our results indicate that in the case of strong or moderate exclusion of motor tails, the average number of motors pulling the tube can be as high as 9 and thus motors moving along a single microtubule protofilament can generate enough force to extract membrane tubes from vesicles. This result is different from previous studies and may be tested by future experiments.     

生物分子马达

生物分子马达处在生命与纳米两学科的交叉点上,注定会成为本世纪基础研究的主角之一。生物分子马达的研究尽管经历了150多年,但突破性进展出现在最近二十年,这既得益于单分子技术的发展,更要归功于物理学家、生物化学家、医学家及计算学家等的联合交叉研究。文章回顾了分子马达研究的历程,展示了主要成果,也提出了面临的问题。