Importin-β Directly Regulates the Motor Activity and Turnover of a Kinesin-4

Anindya Ganguly, Logan DeMott, Chuanmei Zhu, Daniel D. McClosky, Charles T. Anderson, Ram Dixit

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

17 Scopus citations

Abstract

Spatiotemporal regulation of kinesins is essential for microtubule-dependent intracellular transport. In plants, cell wall deposition depends on the FRA1 kinesin, whose abundance and motility are tightly controlled to match cellular growth rate. Here, we show that an importin-β IMB4, regulates FRA1 activity in a developmental manner. IMB4 physically interacts with a PY motif in the FRA1 motor domain and inhibits its motility by preventing microtubule binding, while also protecting FRA1 against proteasome-mediated degradation, thus providing a mechanism to couple the motility and stability of FRA1. This regulatory mechanism is likely to be broadly applicable, based on the conservation of the PY motif in the motor domains of plant and animal kinesins and the direct interaction of multiple plant kinesins with IMB4. Together, our data establish IMB4 as a multi-functional regulator of FRA1 and reveal a mechanism for how plants control the magnitude of cargo transport needed for cell wall assembly. How the activity of kinesins is regulated to meet cellular needs remains poorly understood. Ganguly et al. show that the motility and proteasome-mediated degradation of a kinesin-4 is regulated in a developmental manner by the binding of an importin-β to a conserved PY motif in the kinesin motor domain.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)642-651.e5
JournalDevelopmental cell
Volume44
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 12 2018

Keywords

  • Arabidopsis
  • cell elongation
  • cell wall
  • importin-beta
  • kinesin
  • proteasome
  • protein turnover

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Importin-β Directly Regulates the Motor Activity and Turnover of a Kinesin-4'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this