Structural Delineation of the Neck Linker of Kinesin-3 for Processive Movement.
Ren, J., Zhang, Y., Wang, S., Huo, L., Lou, J., Feng, W.(2018) J Mol Biol 430: 2030-2041
- PubMed: 29752968 
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmb.2018.05.010
- Primary Citation of Related Structures:  
5ZBR, 5ZBS - PubMed Abstract: 
Processive kinesin motors contain a neck linker (NL) that mediates the chemo-mechanical coupling and controls the directionality and processivity. However, kinesin-3 NL remains poorly determined due to the lack of the structural information of the junction with the following neck coil (NC). Here, we determined the structure of the motor domain (MD)-NL-NC NT tandem of KIF13B that defines the junction between NL and NC and delineates kinesin-3 NL. Unexpectedly, the length of kinesin-3 NL is much shorter than the previously predicted one. In the MD-NL-NC NT structure, NL docks onto the MD with a conventional mode but the interaction between NL and the MD is relatively weak due to the shorter N-terminal cover strand of the MD. The optimal short NL and its weak interaction with the MD would generate the tight inter-head strain and facilitate the NL undocking, which may contribute to the fast and superprocessive motility of kinesin-3.
Organizational Affiliation: 
National Laboratory of Biomacromolecules, CAS Center for Excellence in Biomacromolecules, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 15 Datun Road, Beijing 100101, China.