Revealing the inner workings of a molecular motor

Monday, January 12, 2015 - 10:01 in Biology & Nature

In research published in the Journal of Cell Biology, scientists from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan have made important steps toward understanding how dynein—a "molecular motor"—walks along tube-like structures in the cell to move cellular cargo from the outer structures toward the cell body of neurons. The action of this molecule is important for a number of cell functions including axonal transport and chromosome segregation, and its dysfunction is known to lead to a congenital developmental brain disorder known as lissencephaly.

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