Evidence map›Paper›PMID 35867749›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022

Motor guidance by long-range communication on the microtubule highway.

Sithara S Wijeratne, Shane A Fiorenza, Alex E Neary, Radhika Subramanian, Meredith D Betterton

Open access · greenAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
13citing papers in PubMed
2.6field-weighted citation impact, top 10% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

13 citing papers in PubMed, 27 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Programming DNA machines to move.Nature reviews. Chemistry · 2026
    Review
  2. Article
  3. Review
  4. Review
  5. Article
  6. Mechanism and regulation of kinesin motors.Nature reviews. Molecular cell biology · 2025
    Review
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Microscopic interactions control a structural transition in active mixtures of microtubules and molecular motors.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024
    Article
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Review
  13. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.

Sithara S WijeratneDepartment of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115.ORCID 0000-0002-3935-926X
Shane A FiorenzaDepartment of Physics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309.ORCID 0000-0002-3844-2352
Alex E NearyDepartment of Molecular Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02114.
Radhika SubramanianDepartment of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115.ORCID 0000-0002-3011-9403
Meredith D BettertonDepartment of Physics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309.ORCID 0000-0002-5430-5518
Harvard University · USUniversity of Colorado Boulder · USMassachusetts General Hospital · US

Funding

A versatile platform for reconstructing the spatial organization of intracellular signaling during cell-divisionDP2GM126894 · NIGMS · MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL · PI SUBRAMANIAN, RADHIKA · 2017 to 2017
$2.6M
Mechanisms of Kinesin-5 Motors in Mitotic Spindle AssemblyR01GM124371 · NIGMS · UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO · PI BETTERTON, MEREDITH · 2018 to 2021
$1.3M
HHS | NIH | National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) 1DP2GM126894HHS | NIH | National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) R01GM124371NIGMS NIH HHS DP2 GM126894NIGMS NIH HHS R01 GM124371
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Coupling of motor proteins within arrays drives muscle contraction, flagellar beating, chromosome segregation, and other biological processes. Current models of motor coupling invoke either direct mechanical linkage or protein crowding, which rely on short-range motor-motor interactions. In contrast, coupling mechanisms that act at longer length scales remain largely unexplored. Here we report that microtubules can physically couple motor movement in the absence of detectable short-range interactions. The human kinesin-4 Kif4A changes the run length and velocity of other motors on the same microtubule in the dilute binding limit, when approximately 10-nm-sized motors are much farther apart than the motor size. This effect does not depend on specific motor-motor interactions because similar changes in Kif4A motility are induced by kinesin-1 motors. A micrometer-scale attractive interaction potential between motors is sufficient to recreate the experimental results in a biophysical model. Unexpectedly, our theory suggests that long-range microtubule-mediated coupling affects not only binding kinetics but also motor mechanochemistry. Therefore, the model predicts that motors can sense and respond to motors bound several micrometers away on a microtubule. Our results are consistent with a paradigm in which long-range motor interactions along the microtubule enable additional forms of collective motor behavior, possibly due to changes in the microtubule lattice.

Indexed as

KinesinsMicrotubulesMovementHumansKineticsProtein BindingKIF4A protein, humanKinesinscytoskeletonkinesinmicrotubulesmotors

Identifiers

PMID35867749
PMCPMC9282251
OpenAlexW4284885564

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.