Adam Fineberg, Yasuharu Takagi, Kavitha Thirumurugan, Joanna Andrecka, Neil Billington, Gavin Young, Daniel Cole, Stan A Burgess, Alistair P Curd, John A Hammer, James R Sellers, Philipp Kukura, Peter J Knight
Molecular motors employ chemical energy to generate unidirectional mechanical output against a track while navigating a chaotic cellular environment, potential disorder on the track, and against Brownian motion. Nevertheless, decades of nanometer-precise optical studies suggest that myosin-5a, one of the prototypical molecular motors, takes uniform steps spanning 13 subunits (36 nm) along its F-actin track. Here, we use high-resolution interferometric scattering microscopy to reveal that myosin takes strides spanning 22 to 34 actin subunits, despite walking straight along the helical actin filament...
March 26, 2024: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America