Jonathon Howard: Motor proteins go walkabout

K inesins are a large family of plus-end–directed microtubule motor proteins. They are involved in many cellular processes, including organ-ellar traffi cking to cell division and regulation of the microtubule cytoskeleton. Jonathon Howard began studying kine-sins shortly after kinesin-1 was discovered (1). Thanks to his efforts, the motor protein fi eld has made major strides toward understanding the mechanical properties of several kinesin motors (2–4) and the impact of motor proteins on microtubule dynamics (5), flagellar motility (6), and more. But there's yet more territory to cover in this long trek, as we heard when we called him at his new lab at Yale University. I understand that you're originally from Australia… Yes, I grew up in Sydney. Probably the most memorable thing to me about growing up there was the Australian bush. We lived right near Ku-ring-gai National Park, and I always loved spending time in the bush. I think I imprinted on the eucalyptus trees and the subtle beauty of the fl owers, valleys, and creeks. I miss it, having been away from Australia now for 25 years or so. If you want to see eucalyptus trees, you can always visit California… But the trees in California haven't got all the parasites that the southern Australian ones have, so they grow much taller in California. They just look bizarre to Aus-tralians. [Laughs] How did you end up coming to the States then? Clearly not for the trees… I had completed my PhD in Australia on vision and then spent a year in Bristol, England, working with Jonathan Ashmore on hearing. But things weren't going very well for me there, so I took a position instead with Jim Hudspeth in San Francisco. And that worked out much better. For the next three or four years, we did a lot of exciting science together on the mechano-biology of hair cells in the inner ear. What got you interested in that topic? Actually, I fi rst became interested in hear-ing—and biology in general—when I was an undergraduate. I was a math major with a minor in applied mathematics, so I studied very little besides mathematics until one day I came across Hermann von Helmholtz's work. He discovered the conservation of energy, but he also did incredibly interesting work on musical instruments, using Fourier analysis to describe the richness of notes and harmonics. I read his book " On the Sensation of …