Primary Citation of Related Structures:   3KIN
PubMed Abstract: 
The dimeric form of the kinesin motor and neck domain from rat brain with bound ADP has been solved by X-ray crystallography. The two heads of the dimer are connected via a coiled-coil alpha-helical interaction of their necks. They are broadly similar to one another; differences are most apparent in the head-neck junction and in a moderate reorientation of the neck helices in order to adopt to the coiled-coil conformation ...
The dimeric form of the kinesin motor and neck domain from rat brain with bound ADP has been solved by X-ray crystallography. The two heads of the dimer are connected via a coiled-coil alpha-helical interaction of their necks. They are broadly similar to one another; differences are most apparent in the head-neck junction and in a moderate reorientation of the neck helices in order to adopt to the coiled-coil conformation. The heads show a rotational symmetry (approximately 120 degrees) about an axis close to that of the coiled-coil. This arrangement is unexpected since it is not compatible with the microtubule lattice. In this arrangement, the two heads of a kinesin dimer could not have equivalent interactions with microtubules.
Related Citations: 
Crystallization and Preliminary X-Ray Analysis of the Single-Headed and Double-Headed Motor Protein Kinesin Kozielski, F., Schonbrunn, E., Sack, S., Muller, J., Brady, S.T., Mandelkow, E. (1997) J Struct Biol 119: 28
X-Ray Structure of Motor and Neck Domains from Rat Brain Kinesin Sack, S., Muller, J., Marx, A., Thormahlen, M., Mandelkow, E.M., Brady, S.T., Mandelkow, E. (1997) Biochemistry 36: 16155
Organizational Affiliation: 
Max-Planck-Unit for Structural Molecular Biology, Hamburg, Germany.