An international team of researchers, including from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, has reported a new kind of molecular motor. The finding, significant in its own right, opens the door to previously unanticipated cellular processes and potential applications in biology and medicine.
Their paper was published in Nature Physics on May 4.
Each cell in the body is a complex soup of electrochemical reactions that produce energy, but they are not enough. Cells also need to move things, such as pull two organelles together, move cargo towards and away from the nucleus, and power the movement of subcellular molecules. Many of these actions are driven by molecular motors, which use biochemical energy to do mechanical work.
