Molecular Motor Kinesin Walks Like a Drunk Man

How does kinesin, a small (a hundred thousandth the width of human hair) but efficient (more efficient than Toyota Prius) cellular transporter, move? It undergoes random walks on microtubule, like a drunk man, according to a recent computer simulation done at University of Maryland. Although many previous cartoons depict kinesin step as unidirectional and deterministic, hundreds of month-long computer simulations based on the law of physics show that kinesin undergoes bidirectional and stochastic thermal motion while stepping on the polar track microtubule. Ref: Z. Zhang and D. Thirumalai, Structure, 20, 628-640 (2012).