Biophysical Journal
Volume 94, Issue 2, 15 January 2008, Pages 532-541
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Transport of Beads by Several Kinesin Motors,☆☆

https://doi.org/10.1529/biophysj.106.097881Get rights and content
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Abstract

The movements of beads pulled by several kinesin-1 (conventional kinesin) motors are studied both theoretically and experimentally. While the velocity is approximately independent of the number of motors pulling the beads, the walking distance or run-length is strongly increased when more motors are involved. Run-length distributions are measured for a wide range of motor concentrations and matched to theoretically calculated distributions using only two global fit parameters. In this way, the maximal number of motors pulling the beads is estimated to vary between two and seven motors for total kinesin concentrations between 0.1 and 2.5 μg/ml or between 0.27 and 6.7 nM. In the same concentration regime, the average number of pulling motors is found to lie between 1.1 and 3.2 motors.

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Editor: Petra Schwille.

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This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons-Attribution Noncommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/), which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Stefan Klumpp's present address is Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, University of California at San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, Mail Code 0374, La Jolla, CA 92093.