Ms Sze Wing Lok (1st year Ph.D. student) from the Hayashi Laboratory received the Poster Award at the 15th Molecular Motor Society Conference held at the Izusan Training Center in Shizuoka Prefecture between September 10 to 11, 2026.

At the Molecular Motor Society Conference, research groups share the latest theoretical and experimental research findings on molecular motors, providing participants with a platform to freely exchange opinions. Through various life sciences phenomena involving molecular motors and cytoskeletons and artificial design of molecular motors, we explore intersections with a wide range of research fields such as synthetic biology, mechanobiology, and information physics.

The presentation title was “Comparative analysis of stall forces between kinesin-1 and kinesin-3 using a DNA origami nanospring.” Mr. Nobumichi Takamatsu (1st year Ph.D. student) from the Hayashi Laboratory contributed equally to this research.

Kinesin is a motor protein that transports cargo vesicles inside cells and there are about 40 types of kinesins in humans. While kinesin-1 transports a wide variety of cargoes within cells, kinesin-3 plays particularly important roles in neuronal long-distance transport. Based on the force measurement technique using DNA origami nanosprings developed in our previous study [1], this research investigated differences in the mechanical properties of KIF1A and KIF5B. Our results showed that kinesin-1 generates greater force than kinesin-3 (KIF1A). This research demonstrated that the force measurement using nanosprings can be applied to different types of kinesins. In the future, we would like to continue to investigate how these differences in mechanical properties are related to the biophysical roles of each kinesin.

Related Papers

• “Stall force measurement of the kinesin-3 motor KIF1A using a programmable DNA origami nanospring”, eLife 14, RP108477 (2026).

Related Links

• The 15th Molecular Motor Society Conference (in Japanese)
• Hayashi Group, ISSP, The University of Tokyo
• 2026.09.15 ISSP NewsMasaki Nakagawa (Hayashi Group, M1) Receives the Poster Award at the 15th Molecular Motor Society Conference (in Japanese)
• 2026.03.26 ISSP NewsNobumichi Takamatsu (Hayashi Group, M2) Receives the Dean’s Award, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences (in Japanese)
• 2026.02.10 ISSP NewsNobumichi Takamatsu (Hayashi Group, M2) Receives the Poster Award 2025 of the Molecular Biology Society of Japan (in Japanese)
• 2025.10.07 Press ReleaseMeasuring the mechanical abnormality of a neurodegenerative-disease protein with a nanospring (in Japanese)