GRIP-1 (green) directs kinesin along microtubules (red) in dendrites.
Hirokawa/Macmillan
Building a highly polarized cell requires the specific transport of proteins to their final destinations. Kinesin and its binding proteins can direct this differential transport in neuronal cells, according to new results from Mitsutoshi Setou, Nobutaka Hirokawa (University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan), and colleagues.
Kinesin can transport vesicles along microtubules to the axon by binding to the scaffolding protein JSAP1. But now it appears that the motor is not always partial to the axon. Using the glutamate receptor subunit GluR2 as cargo, Hirokawa's group demonstrated that kinesin could also transport its cargo to dendrites, where the receptors are required.
Upon this discovery, Hirokawa says, “we were then interested in understanding how the same motor could determine the direction of transport.” They found their answer in a screen for kinesin binding partners, which identified a glutamate...
