Unconventional Diffusion of Microtubule-Associated Cargos

We examine the near-immotile behavior of individual model cargos driven by mutant NCD Kinesin motors in a minimal microtubule-based system. Although the in vitro system has no cytosolic or cytoskeleton complexity, the cargo motility shows complex behavior. The observed motility is apparently diffusive, but the exact characterization of the diffusivity is shown to depend on lag time as well as environmental factors. We investigate whether this anomalous diffusion can be purely attributed to enzymatic activity of the NCD N340K motors.