The intracellular world is a highly dynamical environment. At any point in time there are thousands of biological processes taking place inside the cell and many of these require cellular material to be transported across large distances inside the cell. Because diffusion isn’t fast enough in these cases, molecular motors have stepped up to the plate to do the job.
Take for example two of these motors: kinesin and dynein. Although they both move along microtubules they do so in opposite directions, with kinesin transporting cargo towards the plus-end while dynein takes care of minus-end transport.
How the cell manages to control these motors to achieve a task remains largely unknown. Several models have been proposed but it is not yet clear how opposite-polarity motors are regulated by the cell. In my research, I combine several biophysical techniques in-vitro to probe how two opposite-polarity motors attached to a single cargo interact with each other.
Molecular motors.
Regulation of bidirectional cargo transport.
Optical trapping.