Struttin’ its stuff
Monty Python may claim credit for immortalizing the “silly walk,” but molecular biology beat the comedy troupe to the punch. It turns out that a tiny motor inside of us called dynein, one tasked with shuttling vital payloads throughout the cell’s intricate highway infrastructure, staggers like a drunken sailor, quite contrary to the regular, efficient poise of its fellow motors. But researchers, led by Harvard Medical School Assistant Professor of Cell Biology Samara Reck-Peterson, believe dynein’s theatrical strut and apparent inefficiency may help keep cells alive and healthy. These findings appear online Jan. 8 in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. Molecular motors, built from proteins, are a kind of transport service that keep cells functioning. They traffic essential chemical packages between the heart of the cell, the nucleus, and the cell periphery. In elongated cells such as neurons, this can be a big commute in cellular miles, equivalent to a person walking from...