Myosin Va molecular motors manoeuvre liposome cargo through suspended actin filament intersections in vitro.

ABSTRACT: Intracellular cargo transport relies on myosin Va molecular motor ensembles to travel along the cell's three-dimensional (3D) highway of actin filaments. At actin filament intersections, the intersecting filament is a structural barrier to and an alternate track for directed cargo transport. Here we use 3D super-resolution fluorescence imaging to determine the directional outcome (that is, continues straight, turns or terminates) for an ∼10 motor ensemble transporting a 350 nm lipid-bound cargo that encounters a suspended 3D actin filament intersection in vitro. Motor-cargo complexes that interact with the intersecting filament go straight through the intersection 62% of the time, nearly twice that for turning. To explain this, we develop an in silico model, supported by optical trapping d

SUBMITTER: Lombardo AT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5461480 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature