Correlation between the cellular functions of the myosin family of molecular motors and their biochemical & structural properties.

Every muscle twitch, heartbeat, and cell division depends on a family of proteins called myosins—tiny molecular motors that haul cargo, sense tension, and generate force inside cells. Scientists understand one prototypical myosin well, but the other 20-plus subfamilies remain largely a black box: no one knows how the same basic motor mechanism is tweaked to perform such wildly different jobs, or how cells send the right signals to control them. This project aims to crack that code. The researchers will test a working hypothesis across more than a dozen different myosins from slime mould, fruit flies, and mammals. They will also develop new fast-reaction methods that can probe the fundamental molecular events of myosin on a sub-millisecond timescale using only microgram quantities of protein. Finally, they will identify the structural motifs linked to specific mechanical activities and regulatory signals. This is fundamental science with no immediate practical application. If successful, it would allow researchers to predict a myosin’s cellular function simply from its genetic sequence—a capability that does not exist today. Such understanding could eventually inform treatments for heart disease, deafness, and cancers, all of which involve myosin dysfunction.