Figure 2.

Schematic presentation of how a full-length kinesin-5 tetramer (green) crosslinks and slides apart antiparallel spindle MTs (blue). The globular motor domains and tail domains are located at the ends of the bipolar structure, connected through the central stalk which includes the bipolar-assembly (BASS) domain in the middle region [37,38]. The pair of motor domains at each end interacts with one of the two anti-parallel MTs and hence crosslinks and slides them apart. Green arrows indicate the plus-end direction of kinesin-5 motor domain movement on the MTs, while purple arrows indicate the direction of MT movement during anti-parallel sliding, with minus ends leading. Within the spindle, MT minus ends are concentrated near the spindle poles. Thus, kinesin-5 induced antiparallel MT sliding separates the spindle poles apart.