witching microtubule molecular motors during melanosome transport in Xenopus Laevis melanophores.

LUCIANA BRUNO, MARIA M. ECHARTE, ENRICO GRATTON, SUSANA SANCHEZ, AND VALERIA LEVI

Long Beach, California US

Congreso; Joint meeting of the Biophysical Society 52nd Meeting & 16th International Biophysics Congress; 2008

Xenopus laevis melanophores are one of the cellular systems commonly used to study the function of molecular motors in vivo. An unexpected but common observation in trajectories of single organelles moving along microtubules is that the organelle frequently revert its direction. This observation was explained by the switching of the motor responsible for the transport but the mechanism by which motors with a given polarity turns on and motors with opposed polarity turns off is not known.In this work, we explore the mechanism of in vivo coordination of microtubule motors by using a fast and precise tracking method. We analyze the interval in the trajectories where reversals of directions are observed and postulate a model to explain the reversals in living cells.