PBIO SEMINAR SERIES

Dynein - the next frontier of cytoskeletal motor proteins

Wednesday - November 15, 2006
Lamport Lecture
3:00 - 4:00 pm
T-625 HSB

Ron Vale
Chair, Dept. of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, Investigator, HHMI University of California, San Francisco
Speaker's website

Host: Stan Froehner

Molecular motor proteins are fascinating enzymatic protein machines that power much of the movement of living organisms. An understanding of how these motors work is not only important for many facets of cell biology, but also for medicine. A great deal of effort has been invested in understanding how kinesin and myosin work, and good models are in hand. In contrast, relatively little is know about the dynein motor protein. One reason is that dynein’s large size (10-folder larger than kinesin) has made it difficult to express and good assays and crystal structures have not been available. In this lecture, I will describe our efforts to express the yeast dynein motor and study it using single molecules approaches. These efforts have allowed us to construct a model of how dynein walks along microtubules. At a cell biological level, I will describe RNAi screens that have allowed us to identify a novel protein involved in recruiting dynein to kinetochores for its role in the mitotic spindle assembly checkpoint.