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ReportsMyosin V Walks by Lever Action and Brownian MotionMyosin V is a molecular motor that moves cargo along actin filaments. Its two heads, each attached to a long and relatively stiff neck, move alternately forward in a "hand-over-hand" fashion. To observe under a microscope how the necks move, we attached a micrometer-sized rod to one of the necks. The leading neck swings unidirectionally forward, whereas the trailing neck, once lifted, undergoes extensive Brownian rotation in all directions before landing on a site ahead of the leading head. The neck-neck joint is essentially free, and the neck motion supports a mechanism where the active swing of the leading neck biases the random motion of the lifted head to let it eventually land on a forward site. Department of Physics, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Okubo 3-4-1, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan. * To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: kazuhiko{at}waseda.jp
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)
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