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* Okazaki Institute for Integrative Bioscience, National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Higashiyama 5-1, Myodaiji, Okazaki 444-8787, Japan;
Department of Physics, Faculty of Physical Sciences, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet-3114, Bangladesh;
Department of Physiology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts 01655-0127, USA;
Department of Physiology and Biosignaling, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University, Yamadaoka 2-2, Suita 565-0871, Japan; ¶ Tsukuba Research Laboratory, Hamamatsu Photonics KK, Tokodai, Tsukuba 300-2635, Japan; and || Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology "Creation and Application of Soft Nano-Machine, the Hyperfunctional Molecular Machine" Team 13*, Tokodai, Tsukuba 300-2635, Japan
Correspondence: Address reprint requests to Kazuhiko Kinosita Jr., Okazaki Institute for Integrative Bioscience, National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Higashiyama 5-1, Myodaiji, Okazaki 444-8787, Japan. Tel.: 81-564-59-5230; Fax: 81-59-564-5234; E-mail: kazuhiko{at}ims.ac.jp.
| ABSTRACT |
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| INTRODUCTION |
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36 nm (Fig. 1 a). However, myosin VI (Rock et al., 2001
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| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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10% of all beads). The beads were coated with myosin VI by mixing at myosin/bead molar ratio c in buffer A containing 10 mg/ml bovine serum albumin, as described (Rief et al., 2000
c), which represents the theoretical probability (based on Poisson statistics) that a bead carries one or more active motors (Block et al., 1990
b was 0.028, and
m was 0.010. Motility assay was performed at c = 1 (pm = 0.01 and pb = 0.03), c = 20 (pm = 0.18 and pb = 0.43), or c = 1000 (p = 1).
Motility assay
Actin bridges between 4.5- or 6.0-µm carboxylated polystyrene beads (Polyscience, Warrington, PA) were formed in a flow chamber (Ali et al., 2002
). Then, beads decorated with myosin VI in buffer A containing ATP, 6 mg/ml glucose, 0.2 mg/ml glucose oxidase, 0.02 mg/ml catalase, and 0.2% ß-mercaptoethanol were infused. To minimize Brownian motion, we selected a tightly suspended actin filament, and positioned a bead duplex onto the filament using optical tweezers (Suzuki et al., 1996
). We moved the filament by moving the microscope stage until it bound the duplex, and turned off the optical trap to let the duplex move along the actin filament. Bright-field images showing bead movement and fluorescence images showing actin filaments were simultaneously recorded with video cameras (Suzuki et al., 1996
). Positions and orientations of bead duplexes were analyzed by eye to the precision of ±1 pixel (0.13 µm) and ±0.2 revolutions (Ali et al., 2002
). Observations were made at 26°C.
| RESULTS AND DISCUSSION |
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20) implies (Ali et al., 2002
Myosin VI may move like kinesin
The idea of neck extension is not unprecedented. Conventional kinesin, which proceeds along a microtubule with 8-nm steps (Svoboda et al., 1993
), has two rather short necks that are not reinforced with light chains and are considered flexible. In a likely scenario (Vale and Milligan, 2000
), an unattached head makes a diffusional search for a next binding site. The sites are distributed 8-nm apart, and reaching the site 8-nm ahead requires almost full extension of the flexible necks. To bias the diffusion of the unattached head in the forward direction, the attached head docks a part of its neck, called neck-linker, such that the docked part is oriented forward. It is undocked again to extend the neck when the associate head is to be thrown forward. For myosin VI, two possibilities have been suggested for its neck extension: undocking or unfolding of the extra insert in the head (red parts in Fig. 1) (Rock et al., 2001
), or unzippering of part of the stalk coiled coil (Nishikawa et al., 2002
). An electron micrograph indeed showed necks of myosin VI that were somehow extended (Nishikawa et al., 2002
). More recent work indicates that the extra insert in myosin VI is actually a second calmodulin binding domain (Bahloul et al., 2004
), and that a flexible region follows this part before the two necks join to form a coiled coil (B. R. Rami and J. A. Spudich, Stanford University, and H. L. Sweeney and C. Franzini-Armstrong, Pennsylvania University, personal communications, 2004). Thus, myosin VI seems to be able to span the observed
36-nm step size by extending the flexible portion of its two necks (Fig. 1 c). The probably stiff calmodulin-binding region could serve as a lever, but the lever is too short (
8 nm) to carry a lifted head 36 nm forward. The head must reach the forward binding site by diffusion. Myosin VI likely walks in a way similar to kinesin (biased diffusional search).
Biasing of diffusion, however, is not trivial in the presence of an opposing external force. In kinesin, the free energy difference between the docked and undocked states is small (Rice et al., 2003
), implying that docking would fail when the stalk is pulled back by a load. For myosin V, rotating a landed neck forward as a lever (Moore et al., 2001
; Veigel et al., 2002
; Burgess et al., 2002
) could serve the purpose of biasing the diffusion of the lifted head. For forward bias, however, the pivot near the neck-stalk junction (Fig. 3 a) has to pass the attached head by moving forward by >
18 nm (Fig. 1 a). But the pivot would be pulled back by 10 nm at 2 pN of backward load where myosin V still moves forward (Rief et al., 2000
), given an estimated neck stiffness (Veigel et al., 2002
) of 0.2 pN/nm. Also, rotating the attached neck,
23 nm long, against the backward load of 2 pN requires a torque of more than 40 pN·nm, the torque of a powerful rotary motor F1-ATPase (Yasuda et al., 1998
). For myosin V, too, simple biasing seems difficult at a high load. This is more serious with myosin VI for which the lever is short and the rest of the neck is flexible: when the stalk is pulled backward, the unattached head would tend to diffuse backward rather than forward. Nevertheless, myosin VI moves forward under a backward load up to
2 pN (Rock et al., 2001
; Nishikawa et al., 2002
).
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First, we deal with the case of elastic legs that are connected to the stalk through a free joint (Fig. 3 a). Legs of myosin V are presumably semirigid and elastic. The case of flexible legs, expected for kinesin, will be considered later, followed by discussion of myosin VI. We assume that bending an elastic leg requires a considerable amount of energy. Key features to note in Fig. 3 are whether a leg is straight and thus is relaxed and whether a sole is parallel to the surface to allow rapid and stable landing. 1), When both feet land on actin, the posture with least strain (bending) in the legs is the one in which the forward toe (red) is down and rear toe (green) is up (Fig. 3 d1). 2), Bending of the red ankle into toe up position, e.g., upon phosphate release, pulls the green foot and brings it up, e.g., by promoting adenosine 5'-diphosphate (ADP) release and subsequent ATP binding in the rear foot (Fig. 3, d2 and d3). This is the lever action. 3), The red leg leans forward and biases the diffusion of the green leg forward. 4), If the green toe remains up, however, its landing on a distant forward site would be difficult because the sole is not in the correct orientation (Fig. 3 d4), and forced landing would result in leg bending (Fig. 3 d5); natural landing would be on a site close to the red foot (Fig. 3 d6). 5), If the green toe goes down upon lifting (Fig. 3 e1), e.g., in response to ATP binding or subsequent hydrolysis, its natural landing site will be a distant forward site (Fig. 3, e3 and e4), whereas other sites would induce leg bending (Fig. 3, e2, e5, and e6). Thus, toe up-down in the lifted foot correctly selects a distant forward site for landing, independent of biased diffusion.
The biased landing by toe up-down operates even if the body (stalk) of the motor is pulled back by an external load. If the leg-stalk junction is pulled back beyond the red foot, simple biasing through leg fluctuation around the junction would fail and tend to promote backward landing (Fig. 3 f1). With the green toe down, however, the green foot still tends to land on a distant forward site (Fig. 3, f3 and f4) and not on a backward site (Fig. 3 f2), although landing near the red foot would also be allowed if the external force is very high (Fig. 3 f6).
The biased landing by toe up-down can operate even if legs are completely flexible, as in kinesin, as long as the landing sites are far apart and require full extension of legs (Fig. 3, h1 and h3). This is because the orientation of the sole on a fully extended leg is restricted, and the sole orientation in the extended leg is dependent on the bend of the ankle (compare Fig. 3, h1 and h2).
Legs of myosin VI are presumably semirigid in the lower half and flexible in the upper half (Fig. 1 c). Unless the ankle action occurs obliquely (see below), the stiff lower legs would make landing at intermediate distances difficult, because that would require an extremely bowlegged posture (Fig. 3, g2 and g3). This accounts for the observed long strides. Because the long strides require almost full extension of the flexible part, landing on a forward site will be warranted, as with kinesin (Fig. 3 h). Unlike a microtubule, however, an actin filament offers landing sites close to a landed foot. If the upper leg is flexible over a sizable length, landing on a nearby forward site (Fig. 3 f6) will not add much strain, particularly in the presence of a backward force. Thus, with an increase in the backward load, we expect to observe frequent short steps in myosin VI, resulting in a smaller average step size. In this regard, the right-handed spiral that we observe here in the absence of a load could also be due to occasional landing on a nearby site (Fig. 3 e5), although most of the steps must still be made onto a site
36 nm forward.
Because both myosin VI and V move essentially straight along actin, the ankle actions in Fig. 3 are all assumed to be along the axis of actin. One could, in principle, design a spiral motor using oblique ankles (Fig. 3, i and j). Nature, though, would not adopt such a design unless she finds a merit in extensive spiraling. One might think that, starting from Fig. 3 j2, the red foot could move straight forward and land on the blue site 36 nm ahead. If the green foot then also moves straight forward and lands on the red site 36 nm ahead, the result would be a straight motion of the whole motor without spiraling, with the average step size of 18 nm, not 36 nm. This, however, is extremely unlikely, because the red ankle would alternate between forward-left (Fig. 3 j2) and backward-left configurations, whereas the green ankle would alternate between forward right and backward right (Fig. 3 j2): the two ankles, which are basically identical, would undergo completely different series of conformational changes to power the motor. Oblique ankles are thus destined to make a spiral motion, through the alternation of forward left and backward right (or forward right and backward left).
Previously suggested mechanisms, docking/undocking in kinesin and lever action in myosin, focus on the ankle action in the landed foot (red foot in Fig. 3). Here we propose that the toe up-down in the lifted foot is equally important, and that the selection of a correct binding site by this mechanism may in fact be the most essential mechanism of assuring forward stepping in all linear motors with multiple legs. Another important mechanism for forward stepping is the preferential detachment of the rear foot after, and only after, the fore foot has landed. This will be achieved by strain dependence of ATPase kinetics, as has been suggested by many researchers. For myosin, landing of the fore foot will introduce strain in the rear foot, such that ADP release is promoted in the rear foot, leading to subsequent ATP binding and detachment of the rear foot (see, e.g., Veigel et al., 2002
), possibly aided by toe down (= heel up) action. The affinity of kinesin for ADP has been shown to be strain dependent (Uemura and Ishiwata, 2003
).
| SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL |
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| ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS |
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This work was supported in part by Grants-in-Aid from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan.
Submitted on November 18, 2003; accepted for publication February 24, 2004.
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