Fig. 3.

Force partitioning between two load-bearing kinesins. (A) Illustration of two load-bearing kinesins attaching to an MT and jointly carrying a cargo with a radius of 250 nm. The stalk length of each kinesin is 50 nm. The cargo is pulled by an external force in the –X direction. Right is the zoomed structure of two kinesins and the MT. The MT is colored cyan. The cargo is colored pink. The motor heads are colored blue. The neck linkers are colored yellow. The stalks are colored red. The separation between two kinesins is D. The external force F is partitioned between the leading kinesin, F(LK), and the trailing kinesin, F(TK). (B) Result of the force partitioning, F(LK)/F, plotted against D at varying external forces from coarse-grained molecular simulations. This graph shows that the leading kinesin takes the majority of the overall loading forces.