Fig. 1.

The transport of motors with opposite polarities results in a tug-of-war and sorting of the motors. (A) Schematic of the experimental setup. Plus-end directed KIF5B and minus-end directed Ncd are attached to a SLB and microtubules are added. (B–D) Left, microscopy imaging of microtubules at low-density gliding on KIF5B 0.6 nM (B) Ncd 2 nM (C) or both motors (D) Arrows indicate the leading tip of a microtubule. Middle, maximum projections of the microtubules gliding over 10 min with a temporal color code. Right, histograms of the microtubules gliding speeds (N = 1 n = 632 for KIF5B, N = 1 n = 245 for Ncd, and N = 1 n = 445 for both motors). (E) Motors accumulated under the microtubules and were sorted toward their respective microtubule end. Images show the maximum projection of images acquired during 15 min of a single microtubule, in the presence of both KIF5B and Ncd. (F) Normalized intensities of KIF5B (magenta) and Ncd (cyan) along microtubules (N = 1, n = 32, error bar = SE). (In all panels, scale bars represent 10 µm).