Relationships between kinesin-1 and its walking track, microtubule, have been extensively investigated using experiments and theories. Despite decades of studying, people in the field are still puzzled about the underlined mechanism of multiple observations suggesting kinesins can communicate through the track: (1) As the neck linker docking process alone is not enough to bring the tethered head towards the next binding site, how communicating through microtubule assists this hand-over-hand walking mechanism? (2) Why at non saturated concentration, kinesin motors cooperatively bind to a subgroup of microtubules, avoiding other microtubules in the same field of view? (3) Why a new coming kinesin prefers to land towards the plus end of a previously bound kinesin? (4) What drives microtubule curvature-sensitive kinesin bind? In this talk, I will provide a unified answer to these observations.

References

Vu HT, Zhang Z, Tehver R, Thirumalai D, Sci. Adv. (2022) 8: eabn0856.
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abn0856