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Updated: Sep 29, 2025

Spatiotemporal Subcellular Manipulation of the Microtubule Cytoskeleton in the Living Preimplantation Mouse Embryo using Photostatins
Published on: November 30, 2021
Dynamic Control of Microbial Movement by Photoswitchable ATP Antagonists
Sampreeth Thayyil1,2, Yukinori Nishigami1,2, Md Jahirul Islam1,2,3
1Research Institute for Electronic Science, Hokkaido University, Kita20, Nishi 10, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido, 001-0020, Japan.
Abstract:
Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is the energy source for various biochemical processes and biomolecular motors in living things. Development of ATP antagonists and their stimuli-controlled actions offer a novel approach to regulate biological processes. Herein, we developed azobenzene-based photoswitchable ATP antagonists for controlling the activity of motor proteins; cytoplasmic and axonemal dyneins. The new ATP antagonists showed reversible photoswitching of cytoplasmic dynein activity in an in vitro dynein-microtubule system due to the trans and cis photoisomerization of their azobenzene segment. Importantly, our ATP antagonists reversibly regulated the axonemal dynein motor activity for the force generation in a demembranated model of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. We found that the trans and cis isomers of ATP antagonists significantly differ in their affinity to the ATP binding site.
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