A cell motor protein spins a built-in left-right switch
Yamaguchi A, Sasamura T, Yoshimura K, Taniguchi H, Kurisu D
Plant Signaling
This one's about fruit flies and lab proteins, not something you'll spot in your garden, but it's part of the deeper biology of how living structures get asymmetric shapes, the same kind of cellular logic that influences how vines twist or leaves spiral.
Researchers studied tiny motor proteins inside fly cells and found that one of them, Myosin1D, organizes the cell's internal skeleton into a ring that always spins the same direction, like a tiny clock hand. A related protein, Myosin1C, does the opposite, spinning things the other way. This helps explain why some body parts consistently develop as mirror-image left or right versions, a puzzle in biology that reaches beyond animals into how asymmetric growth patterns form in nature generally.
Key Findings
Myosin1D and Myosin1C drive opposite circumferential F-actin flows (clockwise vs counterclockwise) in Drosophila macrophages, working alongside Myosin2
In vitro motility assays showed Myosin1C produced random F-actin flow, while Myosin1D triggered self-organized F-actin rings rotating consistently clockwise
The findings support a model where Myosin1D aligns F-actin polarity and Myosin2 rotates the resulting structure, providing a molecular basis for cell and organ chirality
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists found a motor protein called Myosin1D spins a ring of cell-skeleton fibers in a fixed clockwise direction, revealing how individual cells get a built-in left or right handedness that can shape whole-body asymmetry.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Myosin1D directs circumferential F-actin flow to define cell chirality.
Eukaryotic cells possess intrinsic chirality in their structure, motility, and intracellular dynamics, known as cell chirality, which contributes to left-right asymmetric morphogenesis. However, th...
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