Linda Amos

..Dimeric kinesin and dimeric ncd show an interesting difference in the positions of their second heads...

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..Thus, he has played a major part in developing the ideas and techniques that established structural molecular biology as an exciting new science during the second half of the twentieth century...

..Similar models have proved less enlightening in the case of microtubule motors, for which it may be more helpful to consider models involving thermally driven mechanisms...

..In doublet microtubules, the 2 nm filaments may also help to organize the longitudinal spacing of accessory structures, such as groups of inner dynein arms and radial spokes...

..However, new experiments have revealed unique properties of kinesin-5, including some associated with the tail domain, that provide clues as to how spindles are assembled...

..Some structural interactions with other molecules, including nucleotides, drugs, motor proteins and microtubule-associated proteins, can now be predicted...

..The structure of tubulin shows paclitaxel (Taxol(R)) binding to a pocket in beta tubulin on the microtubule's inner surface, which counteracts the effects of GTP hydrolysis occurring on the other side of the monomer...

..Such evidence suggests that the two motor families use common structural mechanisms...

..Microtubule destabilizing drugs such as colchicine alter the longitudinal interfaces of the subunits so that they cannot assemble into a microtubule lattice. These mechanisms are discussed in terms of the atomic structure of the protein...

..The activities of assembly inhibitors are discussed in relation to different nucleotide states of tubulin family protein structures...

..A possible evolutionary relationship of WACAs with eukaryotic septins is discussed...

..Bacterial MinD and eukaryotic dynamin appear to have similar functions in membrane control. In dividing eukaryotic organelles of bacterial origin, bacterial and eukaryotic proteins work together...

..Thus, there is now evidence for cytoskeletal structures, formed by actin-like filaments that are involved in plasmid partitioning in E.coli...

..Filaments of ParM, the actin-like partitioning protein, are also double helical. We suggest that convergent evolution shapes these different types of cytomotive filaments toward a general mechanism for plasmid separation...

..Mollicutes seem to have developed special systems for cell shape determination and motility, such as the fibril protein in Spiroplasma...

..We review the recent progress that has been made in obtaining a glimpse of the structural interactions involved...

..Gold labeling can be used to mark the positions of certain regions of protein sequence...

..We propose that loops in bound tau stabilize microtubules in a similar way to taxol, although with lower affinity so that assembly is reversible...

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..These findings, which suggest a direct involvement of tau in axonal transport, have implications for understanding the pathogenesis of tauopathies...

..We propose that Mal3 promotes assembly by binding to freshly formed tubulin polymer and particularly favors any with A-lattice arrangement. These results reopen the question of microtubule structure in cells...

..Observed structural similarities with rat dynamin 1 suggest that our results have broad implication for other dynamin family members...

..To study the structural changes during ATP hydrolysis, structures of the complexes in the presence and absence of different nucleotides are compared...

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