Cell News—Structure of hook that connects cargo to motors

Inside cells, cargo is carried inside tiny bubbles and pulled along tracks by molecular motors. But like a boxcar on a train track, something has to connect the cargo container to the locomotive engine for the cargo to move. Courtney Schroeder, member of ASCB’s Committee for Postdocs and Students and postdoc at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Ron Vale, former ASCB president and professor at the University of California, San Francisco, solved the structure of the Hook domain of Hook3, a Golgi/endosome cargo adaptor that interacts with dynein. Their work reveals the Hook residues that are critical for forming a stable dynein-dynactin complex, and indicates how the cargo adaptor can activate processive motility.