Heun Jin Lee | PubMed Health

PubMed2006

Engineering cooperativity in biomotor-protein assemblies.

A biosynthetic approach was developed to control and probe cooperativity in multiunit biomotor assemblies by linking molecular motors to artificial protein scaffolds. This approach provides precise control over spatial and elastic coupling between motors. Cooperative interactions between monomeric kinesin-1 motors attached to protein scaffolds enhance hydrolysis activity and microtubule gliding velocity. However, these interactions are not influenced by changes in the elastic properties of the scaffold, distinguishing multimotor transport from that powered by unorganized monomeric motors. These results highlight the role of supramolecular architecture in determining mechanisms of collective transport.

Adenosine Triphosphatases↗

PubMed2003

Behavior of complex knots in single DNA molecules.

We used optical tweezers to tie individual DNA molecules in knots. Although these knots become highly localized under tension, they remain surprisingly mobile and undergo thermal diffusion with classical random walk statistics. The diffusion constants of knots with different complexities correlate with theoretical calculations of knot sizes. We show that this correlation can be explained by a simple hydrodynamical model of "self-reptation" of the knot along a polymer.

Bacteriophage lambda↗