Motor proteins 1: kinesins

Abstract

Progress regarding the kinesins is now being made at a rapid and accelerating rate. The in vivo-functions, and biophysical and enzymatic properties of kinesin itself are being explored at ever increasing levels of detail. The kinesin-related proteins now number several dozen, and although more is known about primary structure than function for most of the proteins, this trend is already reversing. For example, knowledge about the kinesin-related protein, ncd, is expanding rapidly, and more is already known about its three-dimensional structure than is known for kinesin heavy chain. This volume presents a comprehensive review of the major published works on kinesin and kinesin-related proteins. Hopefully, this manuscript will complement other recent review articles [17, 20, 25, 37, 60-62, 67, 69, 75, 85-88, 231, 233, 238, 244, 269-271, 281, 282, 292] or books [49, 227, 293] that have focused on more selective aspects of the kinesin family, or have been aimed more generally at MT motor proteins. In line with the stated purpose of the Protein Profile series, annual updates of the review on the kinesins are planned for at least the next few years.