| Project/Area Number |
06044064
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for international Scientific Research
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | Joint Research |
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| Research Institution | the University of Tokyo |
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Principal Investigator |
KAMIMURA Shinji the University of Tokyo, College of Arts and Sceineces, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, 教養学部, 助教授 (90177585)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
TRINCZEK Bernhard Max-Planck-Institute, Research unit for Structural Molecular Biology, Researcher, 形態分子生物学部門, 研究員
MANDELKOW Eckhard Max-Planck-Institute, Research unit for Structural Molecular Biology, PROFESSOR, 形態分子生物学部門, 教授
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| Project Period (FY) |
1994
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| Project Status |
Completed (Fiscal Year 1994)
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| Budget Amount *help |
¥5,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥5,200,000)
Fiscal Year 1994: ¥5,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥5,200,000)
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| Keywords | Kinesin / Microtubule / MAPs / Cell motility / Subnanometer technique |
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| Research Abstract |
Microtubule is one of the most important cytoskeletal components which support many cell functions including intra-cellular active transportation, cell motility and cell-shapes. We have carried out two main research works during this project. The first, a new assay system was developed to check the motile activity of kinesin-head domains. In this work we have compared the activity with that of native kinesin purified from pig brain. It was suggested that motor domain with 340 amino acid (from N-terminal) purified from transformed E.coli has the motion velocity of about one tenth of native kinesin. This new assay system can be applied to test any other different type of kinesin-heads. This work was done mainly in the laboratory in Max-Plank Institute in Hamburg. The second work was to improve the microscope system to measure a fine motion under optical microscope. Especially during the project we have improved the mechanical stability of optical microscope and measuring precision. Conventional microscopes have been designed to improve the quality of images but mechanical stability is not sufficient for our purpose to measure the nm-scale movement. We have designed a new optical microscope which has a horizontal optical axis. With combination of high-intensity laser-light source we have succeeded to get around 10 pm precision with better than 100kHz time resolution. The new microscope system will be used to analyze intra-molecular interaction between MAPs /motor proteins and microtubule proteins. The work of microscope improvement has been done mainly in the laboratory of Japan.
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