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Creating biomolecular motors based on dynein and actin-binding proteins

Nature Nanotechnology volume 12, pages 233–237 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Biomolecular motors such as myosin, kinesin and dynein are protein machines that can drive directional movement along cytoskeletal tracks1,2 and have the potential to be used as molecule-sized actuators3,4. Although control of the velocity and directionality of biomolecular motors has been achieved5,6,7,8, the design and construction of novel biomolecular motors remains a challenge. Here we show that naturally occurring protein building blocks from different cytoskeletal systems can be combined to create a new series of biomolecular motors. We show that the hybrid motors—combinations of a motor core derived from the microtubule-based dynein motor and non-motor actin-binding proteins—robustly drive the sliding movement of an actin filament. Furthermore, the direction of actin movement can be reversed by simply changing the geometric arrangement of these building blocks. Our synthetic strategy provides an approach to fabricating biomolecular machines that work along artificial tracks at nanoscale dimensions.

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Figure 1: Design and performance of novel actin-based motors.
Figure 2: Directionality and velocity of hybrid motors.
Figure 3: Nucleotide-dependent filament-binding activity of hybrid motors.
Figure 4: Construction of reversed VinT–Dyn motor.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Y. Watari and K. Yamamoto (NICT, Kobe, Japan) for technical assistance, C. Mori, K. Okamasa, Y. Nagahama and N. Fukuta (NICT, Kobe, Japan) for DNA sequencing and K. Miura (EMBL, Germany) for the Temporal-Color Code ImageJ plugin. This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists B from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (grant number 22770164 to K.F.) a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research C from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (grant number 26440089 to K.O.) and the Takeda Science Foundation (to K.O.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Advanced ICT Research Institute, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Kobe, 651-2492, Hyogo, Japan

    Akane Furuta, Misako Amino, Maki Yoshio, Kazuhiro Oiwa, Hiroaki Kojima & Ken'ya Furuta

  2. CREST, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Chiyoda-ku, 102-0076, Tokyo, Japan

    Kazuhiro Oiwa

  3. Graduate School of Life Science, University of Hyogo, Harima Science Park City, Hyogo, 678-1297, Japan

    Kazuhiro Oiwa

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  1. Akane Furuta
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Contributions

A.F. and K.F. conceived and designed the project. A.F., M.A., M.Y. and K.F. conducted the experiments. All authors contributed to writing the paper.

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Correspondence to Ken'ya Furuta.

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Furuta, A., Amino, M., Yoshio, M. et al. Creating biomolecular motors based on dynein and actin-binding proteins. Nature Nanotech 12, 233–237 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2016.238

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