Latest Dynactin Stories

Just like people, some proteins have characteristic ways of "walking," which (also like human gaits) are not so easy to describe. But now scientists have discovered the unique "drunken sailor" gait of dynein, a protein that is critical for the function of every cell in the body and whose malfunction has been associated with neurodegenerative disorders such as Lou Gehrig's disease and Parkinson's disease. The research, which was led by Samara Reck-Peterson of Harvard Medical School and...

The neurodegenerative disease spinocerebellar ataxia type 5 (SCA5) damages nerve cells in two ways. University of Minnesota researchers now report that the defective protein responsible for the disease cuts the number of synaptic terminals and snarls traffic inside neurons. The study appears in the April 5 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology.SCA5 results from a faulty gene for {beta}-III"“spectrin. The disease targets the cerebellum's Purkinje cells, which control coordination. Symptoms...

An international team of scientists led by the University of Leeds has shed new light on the little-understood motor protein called dynein, thought to be involved in progressive neurological disorders such as motor neurone disease.Researchers from the University's Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology and from the University of Tokyo have for the first time identified key elements of dynein's structure, and the winch-like mechanism by which it moves.The research "“ funded by the...