Here we present evidence that the kinesin, Kif5B, is involved in the transportation and axonal targeting of Kv1 channels. We show that a dominant negative variant of Kif5B specifically blocks localization to the axon of expressed, tagged versions of Kv1.3 in cultured cortical slices. In addition, the dominant negative variant of Kif5B blocks axonal localization of endogenous Kv1.1, Kv1.2, and K...

Fluorescence microscopy is employed to identify Kinesin-1 cargos. Recently, the heavy chain of Kinesin-1 (KIF5B) was shown to transport the nuclear transcription factor c-MYC for proteosomal degradation in the cytoplasm. The method described here involves the study of a motorless KIF5B mutant for fluorescence microscopy. The wild-type and motorless KIF5B proteins are tagged with the fluorescent...

The Cdo-p38MAPK (p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase) signaling pathway plays important roles in regulating skeletal myogenesis. During myogenic differentiation, the cell surface receptor Cdo bridges scaffold proteins BNIP-2 and JLP and activates p38MAPK, but the spatial-temporal regulation of this process is largely unknown. We here report that KIF5B, the heavy chain of kinesin-1 motor, is a ...

Nav1.8 is a tetrodotoxin-resistant voltage-gated sodium channel selectively expressed in primary sensory neurons. Peripheral inflammation and nerve injury induce Nav1.8 accumulation in peripheral nerves. However, the mechanisms and related significance of channel accumulation in nerves remains unclear. Here we report that KIF5B promotes the forward transport of Nav1.8 to the plasma membrane and...

The association of cargoes to kinesins is thought to promote kinesin activation, yet the validation of such a model with native cargoes is lacking because none is known to activate kinesins directly in an in vitro system of purified components. The RAN-binding protein 2 (RANBP2), through its kinesin-binding domain (KBD), associates in vivo with kinesin-1, KIF5B/KIF5C. Here, we show that KBD and...

Recent studies showed that kidney-specific inactivation of Kif3a produces kidney cysts and renal failure, suggesting that kinesin-mediated intracellular transportation is important for the establishement and maintenance of renal epithelial cell polarity and normal nephron functions. Kif5b, one of the most conserved kinesin heavy chain, is the mouse homologue of the human ubiquitous Kinesin Heav...

BACKGROUND Enhanced lysosomal trafficking is associated with metastatic cancer. In an attempt to discover cancer relevant lysosomal motor proteins, we compared the lysosomal proteomes from parental MCF-7 breast cancer cells with those from highly invasive MCF-7 cells that express an active form of the ErbB2 (DeltaN-ErbB2). METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Mass spectrometry analysis identified k...

BACKGROUND The KIF5B-RET rearrangement is detected with the frequency of 1 ~ 2% in 'triple marker'-negative lung adenocarcinomas, i.e., EGFR, KRAS and EML4-ALK wild type. These mutational changes are known to be mutually exclusive, but the co-existence of ALK rearrangement with activating mutations of EGFR is rarely found. METHODS We examined the KIF5B-RET fusion gene in frozen tissues from 1...

Recently, a novel fusion gene resulting from a linkage between the kinesin family member 5B gene (KIF5B; 10p11.22) and the rearranged during transfection gene (RET; 10q11.21) was identified in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, the correlation between the KIF5B/RET fusion gene status and the clinicopathological features of surgically-tre...

RET encodes the tyrosine kinase receptor of growth factors belonging to the glial-derived neurotrophic factor family. Recently, RET gene rearrangements with N-terminal of KIF5B gene were identified in lung adenocarcinomas from large-scale sequencing. We investigated RET mRNA expression by real-time reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay using LightCycler, and KIF5B/RET g...