The physiological cargo adaptor of kinesin-2 functions as an evolutionary conserved lockpick

Specific recognition of cellular cargo and efficient transport to its correct intracellular destination is an infrastructural challenge faced by most eukaryotic cells. This remarkable deed is accomplished by processive motor proteins that are subject to robust regulatory mechanisms. The first level of regulation entails the ability of the motor to suppress its own activity. This autoinhibition is eventually relieved by specific cargo binding. To better understand the role of the cargo during motor activation, we dissected the activation mechanism of the ciliary homodimeric kinesin-2 from Caenorhabditis elegans by its physiological cargo. In functional reconstitution assays, we identified two cargo adaptor proteins that together are necessary and sufficient to allosterically activate the autoinhibited motor. Surprisingly, the orthologous adaptor proteins from the unicellular green algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii also fully activated the kinesin-2 from worm, even though C. reinhardtii itself lacks a homodimeric kinesin-2 motor. The latter suggested that a motor activation mechanism similar to the C. elegans model existed already well before metazoans evolved, and prompted us to scrutinize predicted homodimeric kinesin-2 orthologs in other evolutionarily distant eukaryotes. We show that the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila not only possesses a homodimeric kinesin-2 but that it also shares the same allosteric activation mechanism that we delineated in the C. elegans model. Our results point to a much more fundamental role of homodimeric kinesin-2 in intraflagellar transport (IFT) than previously thought and warrant further scrutiny of distantly related organisms toward a comprehensive picture of the IFT process and its evolution.