During meiotic prophase I of the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, oscillatory nuclear movement occurs. This promotes homologous chromosome pairing and recombination and involves cortical dynein, which plays a pivotal role by generating a pulling force with the help of an unknown dynein anchor. We show that Mcp5, the homologue of the budding yeast dynein anchor Num1, may be this putative...

An important challenge is to understand the functional specialization of dynein heavy chains. The ciliary outer arm dynein from Tetrahymena thermophila is a heterotrimer of three heavy chains, called alpha, beta and gamma. In order to dissect the contributions of the individual heavy chains, we used controlled urea treatment to dissociate Tetrahymena outer arm dynein into a 19S beta/gamma dimer...

Cytoplasmic dynein is a microtubule minus-end-directed motor that is thought to power the transport of vesicles from the TGN to the apical cortex in polarized epithelial cells. Trans-Golgi enriched membranes, which were isolated from primary polarized intestinal epithelial cells, contain both the actin-based motor myosin-I and dynein, whereas isolated Golgi stacks lack dynein but contain myosin...

Inner dynein arms, but not outer dynein arms, require the activity of KHP1(FLA10) to reach the distal part of axonemes before binding to outer doublet microtubules. We have analyzed the rescue of inner or outer dynein arms in quadriflagellate dikaryons by immunofluorescence microscopy of p28(IDA4), an inner dynein arm light chain, or IC69(ODA6), an outer dynein arm intermediate chain. In dikary...

Mutations in the human LIS1 gene cause type I lissencephaly, a severe brain developmental disease involving gross disorganization of cortical neurons. In lower eukaryotes, LIS1 participates in cytoplasmic dynein-mediated nuclear migration. We previously reported that mammalian LIS1 functions in cell division and coimmunoprecipitates with cytoplasmic dynein and dynactin. We also localized LIS1 t...

We report the identification and initial characterization of seven Drosophila dynein heavy chain genes. Each gene is single copy and maps to a unique genomic location. Sequence analysis of partial clones reveals that each encodes a highly conserved portion of the putative dynein hydrolytic ATP-binding site in dyneins that includes a consensus phosphate-binding (P-loop) motif. One of the clones ...

The structure of dynein isolated from several sources follows the pattern first observed with Tetrahymena 22 S dynein, which has three globular heads attached by three flexible strands to a root-like base. Recent biochemical data indicate that there is one ATPase site on each dynein head and that all three heads interact with microtubules in an ATP-sensitive manner. Accordingly, images of dynei...

BACKGROUND Cytoplasmic dynein is the molecular motor responsible for most retrograde microtubule-based vesicular transport. In vitro single-molecule experiments suggest that dynein function is not as robust as that of kinesin-1 or myosin-V because dynein moves only a limited distance (approximately 800 nm) before detaching and can exert a modest (approximately 1 pN) force. However, dynein-drive...

C/A dynein is a novel dynein isolated from sea urchin sperm flagellar axonemes. It is composed of C and A heavy chains and some additional lower molecular mass polypeptide chains. The characterization of ATPase activity and the interaction of this dynein with microtubules polymerized from calf brain tubulin were investigated in this study. The ATPase activity of C/A dynein (0.3-0.4 mumol Pi/min...

Axonemes were isolated from sperm of Colobocentrotus by a procedure involving two extractions with 1% Triton X-100 and washing The isolated axonemes contained 7 x 10(15) g protein per microm of their length. Treatment of the axonemes with 0 5 M KCl for 30 min extracted 50-70% of the flagellar ATPase protein, dynein, and removed preferentially the outer arms from the doublet tubules. Almost all ...