Minimum requirements for the actin-like treadmilling motor system

Abstract

Actin is one of the most abundant proteins in eukaryote cells, which forms a double stranded filament. The actin filament is not only a main component of the cytoskeleton, but also acts as a motor protein which moves toward one specific end, the barbed end, driven by polymerization at the barbed end and depolymerization at the other end, the pointed end, without any associated proteins. This motor activity is referred to as “treadmilling” and it represents the simplest motor system known, consisting of only one 42 kDa protein, actin. Here we report the minimum requirements of the actin-like motor system elucidated by computer simulations: (1) Nucleotide binding and ATPase activity in the filament; (2) Polarity in the rates of polymerization and depolymerization between the two ends; and (3) The dependence of the subunit-subunit interactions on the bound nucleotide. These requirements are simple and this knowledge should facilitate the development of artificial molecular motor systems in the future.