A kinesin motor genuinely walks along a microtubule: its two heads bind and release in turn, each step about 8 nanometres long and costing exactly one ATP. The more motors gripping the same vesicle, the more cargo gets hauled across the cytoplasm. The microtubule itself is never still either, showing dynamic instability: growing longer, then shrinking catastrophically, then growing again. Taxol locks microtubules rigid so the mitotic spindle can no longer pull, which is precisely how one family of anticancer drugs does its work.
A kinesin motor genuinely walks along a microtubule: its two heads bind and release in turn, each step about 8 nanometres long and costing exactly one ATP. The more motors gripping the same vesicle, the more cargo gets hauled across the cytoplasm. The microtubule itself is never still either, showing dynamic instability: growing longer, then shrinking catastrophically, then growing again. Taxol locks microtubules rigid so the mitotic spindle can no longer pull, which is precisely how one family of anticancer drugs does its work.
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