The human kinesin-14 HSET tracks the tips of growing microtubules in vitro.

Tip-tracking of kinesin-14 motor proteins is believed to be crucial for the assembly and maintenance of dynamic microtubule arrays. However, in contrast to other members of the kinesin-14 family, H. sapiens kinesin-14 HSET has so far never been observed to be prominently located at microtubule plus ends. Here, using an in vitro microtubule dynamics reconstitution assay we observe tip-tracking of GFP-HSET in the presence of H. sapiens EB1 (hsEB1). Tip-tracking depended on the SxIP-like motif in HSET as well as on the EB homology domain in hsEB1. D. melanogaster Ncd and S. pombe Klp2 tip-tracking reconstitution assays accompanied by kinesin-14 amino acid sequence comparisons suggest that SxIP-like motif mediated tip-tracking dependent on EB family proteins is conserved in the kinesin-14 family of molecular motors.