Structure determination of the catalytic domains of two members of the kinesin superfamily reveals that this class of molecular motor exhibits the same architecture as myosin and suggests that these microtubule- and actin-based motors arose from a common ancestor.

Actin-crosslinking proteins link F-actin into the bundles and networks that constitute the cytoskeleton. Dystrophin, beta-spectrin, alpha-actinin, ABP-120, ABP-280, and fimbrin share homologous actin-binding domains and comprise an actin crosslinker superfamily. We have identified a novel member of this superfamily (ACF7) using a degenerate primer-mediated PCR strategy that was optimized to res...

With the enormous amount of sequence data generated from the genome projects, function prediction and sequence annotation become critical for understanding and effectively utilizing the information potentially available. Classifying unknown sequences into appropriate, well curated families plays an important role in fulfilling such a task. Here, we compare several protein superfamily building a...