Drag racers and long haulers: the design space of myosin-V-like motor proteins

Plant-specific myosin-XI motors achieve velocities from 0.25 to 70 m/s despite sharing myosin-V-like structure, and a model predicts a velocity–run-length trade-off.

• Why it matters: The work addresses how one myosin-V-like design can support both highly processive long-haulers and extremely rapid drag-racers, linked to an observed inverse relationship between run length and velocity.
• What they did: The authors generalize a polymer-based, force-dependent myosin-V dynamics model to cover the broader design space and quantitatively capture experimental data from fast myosin-XI.
• The result: They derive a Pareto frontier defining the trade-off between velocity and run distance and a theoretical maximum velocity, establishing biological limits for natural and synthetic myosin-V-like motors.