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Kinesin Molecular Motor Walk

Interactive 3D simulation of a kinesin motor protein hand-over-hand walking along a microtubule protofilament, driven by an ATP hydrolysis cycle and opposed by a tunable load force, with a stochastic 8 nm stepping model.

Molecular Biology3DModerate60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted💧 Water⇄ 2D version
nanobiology-basics ↗ Open standalone

Kinesin is a two-headed protein nanomachine that hauls cargo along microtubule filaments inside living cells by converting ATP hydrolysis into discrete 8 nm mechanical steps. This simulation renders the microtubule as a lattice of tubulin-dimer binding sites and animates a kinesin dimer walking hand-over-hand along a single protofilament, with each step gated by a load- and temperature-dependent stochastic model matched to single-molecule optical-trap measurements. Tune ATP concentration, opposing load force and thermal noise to see the motor speed up, stall near its ~7 pN stall force, or become dominated by thermal jitter — with live readouts of step count, distance walked, mean velocity and stall probability.

⚙ Under the hood

Control a kinesin motor's ATP level, load force, and thermal noise to see its hand-over-hand walk along a microtubule.

nanobiologymolecular motorkinesinmicrotubuleATPbiophysics

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install

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