Science 4 March 2011:
Vol. 331 no. 6021 pp. 1143-1144
DOI: 10.1126/science.1203978
PERSPECTIVE BIOCHEMISTRY
Molecular Motors, Beauty in Complexity
James A. Spudich
+Author Affiliations
Biochemistry Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
E-mail: jspudich@stanford.edu
Among the most fascinating enzymes are the molecular motors, which exquisitely couple adenosine triphosphate (ATP) hydrolysis to directional mechanical motion. They power the movement of intracellular vesicles, chromosomes, and messenger RNA–protein complexes through the cytoplasm of nearly all eukaryotic cells, using actin filaments and microtubules as their tracks. A prominent theme in these motors is allostery, or communications that occur across the enzyme at several nanometer distances. Chemical events occurring in the motor's active site, for instance, are coordinated with tight binding of the motor to the track along which it moves, and then its subsequent release, and with mechanical elements that amplify small movements occurring near the active site. In the 1980s, researchers used quantitative in vitro motility assays, sensitive to single molecules, to study two of the three major classes of motor enzymes: the microtubule-based kinesin family and the actin-based myosin family. In the 1990s, investigators solved the crystal structures of kinesin 1 (1) and muscle myosin II (2). These complementary approaches ushered in a new era of understanding the mechanisms of these molecular machines. Dynein, the third important class of molecular motor, is a complex that processively moves along microtubules in the opposite direction to kinesin 1. Although single molecule assays have been applied to dynein, detailed structural information on this mammoth machine has remained elusive, until now. On page 1159 of this issue, Carter et al. (3) report a crystal structure for a 610-kD homodimer of yeast cytoplasmic dynein. The structure reveals surprises about how this massive molecular motor might work.
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