Live Cell Imaging: how does Myosin 10 get to the tip of filopodia?

Myosin 10 is required to form filopodia, thin actin rich protrusions and it accumulates at the tip of these filopodia. It uses a combination of diffusion and active translocation to find its way to the right place in the cell. Tracking fluorescent myosin 10 molecules, and plotting their positions shows the tracks that this myosin uses in getting to the tip (as shown above). This image is taken from our recent paper in Journal of Biological Chemistry (Baboolal et al., (2016) J. Biol. Chem. 291, 22373-22385, and is a collaboration with Justin Molloy at the Crick Institute.

Myosin 10 moving to the tip, as an animated kymograph