The assembly of kinesin-based nanotransport systems

At the nano-scale many proteins act as biological actuators for rotation or translation. Among these proteins, the building blocks of self-assembled, highly efficient natural motors, kinesin is considered a promising tool in the development of synthetic nanorobots. Conversion of chemical energy into mechanical work, harnessed by the hydrolysis of adenosine triphosphate, propels kinesin along a cytoplasmic system of fibers, known as a microtubule. Even though recent efforts were made to engineer tailor-made artificial nanotransport systems using kinesin, no systematic study investigated how these systems can be organized from the bottom up using the surface plasmon resonance technique. Here, we show that it is possible to quantitatively evaluate how each component of such nanoscopic machines is sequentially assembled by monitoring the individual association of its components, focusing specifically on the kinesin association to microtubules as well as the cargo-kinesin association. Furthermore, the kinetic parameters reported here for the microtubules and recombinant biotinylated kinesin binding process properties are of utmost importance due to the current widespread use of biotinylated kinesin in the construction of synthetic nano-machines.