Motility articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cytoplasmic dynein 2 drives retrograde intraflagellar transport but little is known about its dynamics. Here the authors use fluorescence microscopy to track labelled dynein 2 inC. elegansat the single-molecule level and report diffusion at the ciliary base, and pausing and directional switches along the cilium.

    • Jona Mijalkovic
    • , Bram Prevo
    •  & Erwin J. G. Peterman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A point mutation in the gap-junction protein connexin 30 stops early onset age-related hearing loss. Here, the authors show that gap junctions contribute to cochlear micromechanics and that cochlear amplification is likely controlled by extracellular potentials in vicinity of the cochlear sensory cells.

    • Victoria A. Lukashkina
    • , Snezana Levic
    •  & Ian J. Russell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recent data suggest that muscle contraction is regulated by thick filament mechano-sensing in addition to the well-known thin filament-mediated calcium signalling pathway. Here the authors provide direct evidence that myosin activation in skeletal muscle is controlled by thick filament stress independently of calcium.

    • L. Fusi
    • , E. Brunello
    •  & M. Irving

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A small molecule (autoinducer 2, or AI-2) regulates biofilm formation and virulence in several bacteria, but its role in Escherichia coli is unknown. Here, Laganenka et al. show that chemotaxis towards self-produced AI-2 mediates autoaggregation and promotes stress resistance and biofilm formation in E. coli.

    • Leanid Laganenka
    • , Remy Colin
    •  & Victor Sourjik

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Myosin X is a molecular motor unique in its ability to generate filopodia, but the mechanism explaining this behaviour is not known. Here, through a combination of structure, single-molecule assays and modelling the authors show that myosin X is optimized for transport along actin bundles.

    • Virginie Ropars
    • , Zhaohui Yang
    •  & Anne Houdusse

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Passive particles surrounded by swimming protists diffuse tens of times faster than their thermal motion, which might have an impact on microscopic predator-prey interaction in nature. Here, Jeanneret et al.investigate its physical origin and identify direct particle entrainment as the dominant feature.

    • Raphaël Jeanneret
    • , Dmitri O. Pushkin
    •  & Marco Polin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Centralspindlin consists of dimeric kinesin-6 and dimeric RacGAP, and is involved in the organization of anaphase midzone microtubules. Here, the authors show that the RacGAP is needed for motor activity at the plus-end of microtubules, but not for the bundling activity associated with kinesin-6.

    • Li Tao
    • , Barbara Fasulo
    •  & William Sullivan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It was recently shown that basal cells in pseudostratified epithelia extend a long cytoplasmic process across the tight junction barrier into the lumen. Here Roy & Kim et al. show that these projections, which they call axiopodia, extend and retract over time in a c-Src and MEK-ERK-dependent manner.

    • Jeremy Roy
    • , Bongki Kim
    •  & Sylvie Breton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How mutations in β3-tubulin cause axonal growth defects in congenital fibrosis of the extraocular muscles type 3 remains elusive. Minoura et al. develop a model system using recombinant human tubulin that demonstrates a link between tubulin mutation, impaired kinesin motility and axonal growth defects.

    • Itsushi Minoura
    • , Hiroko Takazaki
    •  & Etsuko Muto

  • Article
    | Open Access

    F1-ATPase is a rotary motor protein that can efficiently convert chemical energy of ATP hydrolysis to mechanical work. Here, the authors study its catalytic reactions using high-speed single-molecule observations and contemporary time series analysis, and propose a lock and key type mechanism.

    • Chun-Biu Li
    • , Hiroshi Ueno
    •  & Tamiki Komatsuzaki

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Coordinated epithelial movement during embryogenesis drives complex tissue formation, but how this movement is coordinated to maintain epithelial integrity is not clear. Here the authors show that left-right asymmetry in cell intercalation drives clockwise rotation of epithelia inDrosophilagenital development.

    • Katsuhiko Sato
    • , Tetsuya Hiraiwa
    •  & Erina Kuranaga

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sperm motion near surfaces plays a key role in fertilization, but a description of how this motion differs from bulk swimming is lacking. Here, Nosrati et al.visualize sperm swimming within 1 μm of a glass surface and describe a ‘slither’ swimming mode which differs from bulk helical swimming, and increases the velocity of human sperm.

    • Reza Nosrati
    • , Amine Driouchi
    •  & David Sinton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Microscopy techniques used to study the movement of swimming microbes are limited to two dimensions or require sophisticated devices. Here, Taute et al. present a simple method for high-throughput 3D tracking of bacteria using standard phase contrast microscopy.

    • K.M. Taute
    • , S. Gude
    •  & T.S. Shimizu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nerve damage can lead to skeletal muscle paralysis and atrophy. Here, the authors show that localized photostimulation of mouse calf muscle expressing the light-sensitive channel Channelrhodopsin-2 generates contraction in the absence of neural impulses and prove that this strategy can be used to prevent muscle atrophy.

    • Philippe Magown
    • , Basavaraj Shettar
    •  & Victor F. Rafuse

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lévy walks have been found in the motion of large animals such as birds and fish in search of sparsely and randomly distributed food. Here, Arielet al. observe, by tracking long-duration trajectories of fluorescently labelled bacteria, similar walks in bacterial swarms for the first time.

    • Gil Ariel
    • , Amit Rabani
    •  & Avraham Be'er

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cytoplasmic dynein is a dimeric protein that steps processively along microtubules. Here Imaiet al. present cryo-electron microscopy images of stepping D. discoideumdynein, revealing diverse microtubule-bound configurations including a hinge-dependent, motors side-by-side arrangement.

    • Hiroshi Imai
    • , Tomohiro Shima
    •  & Stan A. Burgess

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sperm use external cues to find the egg using ill-defined principles. Here the authors use holographic microscopy and optochemical tools to study sperm swimming in light-sculpted chemical 3D landscapes; they show that sperm translate the temporal stimulation pattern into multiple swimming behaviours to orient deterministically in a gradient.

    • Jan F. Jikeli
    • , Luis Alvarez
    •  & U. Benjamin Kaupp

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conventional methods to quantify the migratory behaviour of cells assume that underlying parameters are constant. Mark et al.apply a superstatistical approach to extract time-dependent parameters of motile cells, and demonstrate an enhanced ability to distinguish between different migration strategies.

    • Claus Metzner
    • , Christoph Mark
    •  & Ben Fabry

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Theoretical studies on chemosensation often invoke a model of three dimensional unbounded diffusion, but many biological problems involve two-dimensional diffusion in a bounded domain. Here Bicknell et al.present a model for chemosensation that covers bounded domains of any dimension, and apply it to biological problems in two dimensions.

    • Brendan A. Bicknell
    • , Peter Dayan
    •  & Geoffrey J. Goodhill

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In bacteria, type III secretion systems (T3SS) allow the direct transport of protein across membranes, and related elements of a sorting platform facilitate hierarchical secretion of protein substrates. Here, the authors illustrate the mechanism of selective assembly of the T3SS sorting platforms in injectisome and flagellar systems.

    • Ryan Q. Notti
    • , Shibani Bhattacharya
    •  & C. Erec Stebbins

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pigment pattern formation in zebrafish depends on the interactions between the pigment cells. Here the authors present a mathematical model based on mutual interaction of pigment cells in the absence of cell motion, revising the current model of the pattern formation that relies on reaction–diffusion Turing patterns.

    • D. Bullara
    •  & Y. De Decker

  • Article |

    Alignment of chromosomes at the spindle equator involves two kinesin family molecular motors, Kid and CENP-E. Here, Iemura and Tanaka show differential contributions of these motors, whereby Kid promotes partial alignment before end-on microtubule attachment to chromosomes, and CENP-E promotes alignment when microtubules are stabilized.

    • Kenji Iemura
    •  & Kozo Tanaka

  • Article |

    Studies of cellular mechanotransduction commonly use elastic substrates, whereas biological substrates are viscoelastic, exhibiting stress relaxation. Here, the authors show through computational modelling and experiments that viscoelastic substrates can stimulate cell spreading to a greater extent than purely elastic substrates with the same initial stiffness.

    • Ovijit Chaudhuri
    • , Luo Gu
    •  & David J. Mooney

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cytoplasmic dynein from the yeast S. cerevisiae behaves distinctly from mammalian dyneins, despite structural conservation. Here, Nicholas et al. identify a C-terminal domain in mammalian dynein that restricts force generation and travel distance, which, when removed, allows mammalian dynein to behave like its yeast counterpart.

    • Matthew P. Nicholas
    • , Peter Höök
    •  & Arne Gennerich

  • Article |

    How living cells move around is crucial for the understanding of their biological functions. Here, Tjhung et al. reproduce cellular motility via a minimal physical model, whereby a cell in three-dimensions is represented as a droplet of active polar fluid constrained by interfacial tension.

    • E. Tjhung
    • , A. Tiribocchi
    •  & M. E. Cates

  • Article |

    Dynein is a microtubule-based motor protein, but the mechanism of how it generates force is not clear. Here, Belyy et al. use an optical trapping approach to measure force and conclude that the two dynein heads function through a unique load sharing mechanism allowing them to work against forces greater than an individual head.

    • Vladislav Belyy
    • , Nathan L Hendel
    •  & Ahmet Yildiz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pseudomonas aeruginosa migrate by deploying their type-IV pili. Here, Zhang et al. show that P. aeruginosacan adapt to the physical microenvironment by using their type-IV pili to ‘slingshot’ more across soft surfaces to exploit inherent shear thinning properties of the surface.

    • Rongrong Zhang
    • , Lei Ni
    •  & Fan Jin

  • Article |

    A complete description of how the motor protein kinesin-1 walks along microtubules is missing because of the lack of a key structure. Here, Cao et al. solve the apo-kinesin:microtubule structure, completing the structure set and permitting the description of the structural changes that occur during the nucleotide cycle and their functional consequences.

    • Luyan Cao
    • , Weiyi Wang
    •  & Benoît Gigant

  • Article |

    Coordinated beating of motile cilia is important to clear mucus from the airway. Here, Clare et al. show that galectin-3 at the base of motile cilia in the trachea is important for connecting cortical microtubules to the basal body, and subsequent organization and coordination of beating cilia.

    • Daniel K. Clare
    • , Jérémy Magescas
    •  & Delphine Delacour

  • Article |

    It remains unclear how the dynactin complex activates cytoplasmic dynein motor proteins. Ayloo et al.use single molecule imaging to observe dynein–dynactin behaviour on microtubules, and show that dynactin recruits dynein to microtubules and acts as a brake to slow the motor.

    • Swathi Ayloo
    • , Jacob E. Lazarus
    •  & Erika L. F. Holzbaur

  • Article |

    Unlike most processive motor proteins, the stepping motion of cytoplasmic dynein’s two linked motor domains is not precisely coordinated. Cleary et al.show that the ATPase activity of just one head is required for processive movement, and that tension on the linker gates the release of the motor from microtubules.

    • Frank B. Cleary
    • , Mark A. Dewitt
    •  & Ahmet Yildiz

  • Article |

    The potential advantages of specific cell shapes among microbes are unclear. Here, the authors show that the curved shape of the bacterium Caulobacter crescentus, which lives in lakes and streams, helps cells to colonize surfaces in the presence of fluid flow.

    • Alexandre Persat
    • , Howard A. Stone
    •  & Zemer Gitai

  • Article |

    Patchiness in the distribution of phytoplankton promotes many of the ecological interactions that underpin the marine food web. This study shows that turbulence, ubiquitous in the ocean, counter-intuitively ‘unmixes’ a population of motile phytoplankton, generating intense, small-scale patchiness in its distribution.

    • William M. Durham
    • , Eric Climent
    •  & Roman Stocker

  • Article |

    Vesicle trafficking in the cell is likely to involve a tug-of-war between motor proteins of opposing directionality. Guet al. use high-speed single-particle tracking in neurons to uncover rotation of paused cargo vesicles, providing insight into the changing forces as the vesicles change direction.

    • Yan Gu
    • , Wei Sun
    •  & Ning Fang

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