A torque component in the kinesin-1 power stroke

Kinesin-1 is a twin-headed molecular motor that moves along microtubules in 8-nm steps, using a walking action in which the two heads interact alternately with the microtubule1,2,3,4. Constructs with only one head can also produce impulses of force and motion5,6,7, indicating that the walking action is an amplification strategy that leverages an underlying force-generating event. Recent work suggests that directional force is produced either by directionally biased selection of microtubule binding sites8,9 or by a conformational change subsequent to the binding event10,11,12. We report here that surface-attached rat kinesin-1 monomers drive counterclockwise rotation of sliding microtubules around their axes, and that by manipulating the assay geometry, we could reduce or block the torsional motion with negligible effects on the axial motion. We can account for this behavior on the simple assumption that kinesin heads tend to bind to the closest available tubulin heterodimer in the lattice, but only in the case where an additional biasing process is present that shifts the start position for diffusion-to-capture toward the microtubule plus end by ∼1 nm.