Functional anatomy of the kinesin molecule in vivo

We have developed an assay that allows the functional efficiency of mutant kinesins to be probed in vivo. We show here that the growth rate of the filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa can be used as a sensitive reporter for the ability of mutant kinesins to suppress the phenotype of the kinesin null mutant of Neurospora. Truncation mutants, internal deletion mutants and chimeras, in which homologous domains were exchanged between different fungal kinesins, were generated and transformed into the kinesin-deficient strain. None of the mutations affect motor velocity in vitro, but even minor alterations in the tail domain severely compromise kinesin's performance in vivo. The analysis of these mutants has identified subdomains in the stalk and tail likely to be involved in cargo binding and/or regulation of motor activity. The phenotypes of several mutants strongly suggest that kinesin requires a folded conformation to achieve full functionality in vivo. Folding critically depends on two flexible domains in the stalk that allow an interaction of the tail with the neck/hinge region near the catalytic motor domain. The assay has proven to be a valuable tool in the analysis of kinesin function in vivo and should help to characterize the sites involved in intra- and intermolecular interactions.