Fig. 5. Measurement of dynein stall times.

(a) We show a simulated time course of the force exerted by an optical trap on a cargo driven by a single dynein motor at 1mM ATP. Three stalling events are shown (indicated by the vertical arrows). The horizontal double-sided arrows mark the stall times for two of these events (τ₁ and τ₂). The precipitous drop in force after each stall reflects the detachment of the motor. In our simulations, the motor instantaneously re-attached to the track after detachment. (b) We show the distribution of stall forces obtained from 1000 detachment events as characterized in (a).