In an effort to understand how specific structural features within the kinesin neck, a region of the heavy chain located between the catalytic core and stalk domains, may contribute to motor processivity (an ability to remain attached to the microtubule filament), we have prepared several synthetic peptides corresponding to the neck region of human conventional kinesin and determined their secondary structure content and stability by CD spectroscopy. Our results show that the coiled-coil dimerization domain within the human kinesin neck region corresponds to residues 337 to 369 in solution, and thus is in excellent agreement with the recent X-ray crystallographic structures of rat brain kinesin. Further, we show that the first and last heptads of this region are absolutely critical for creating the high stability and association of the dimeric structure. Interestingly, addition of the 7 N-terminal neck-linker residues (330-336) to the coiled-coil domain significantly increased its stability (0 GdnHCl midpoint of 1 M or an increase of similar to1.5 kcal/mol), indicating that a strong structural link exists between the neck-linker and coiled-coil region. Subsequent high-resolution structural analysis of the residues located at the junction of the neck-linker and coiled-coil revealed the presence of the two helix capping motifs, the capping box (a reciprocal interaction of Thr 336 with Gln 339) and the hydrophobic staple (a hydrophobic packing interaction of Leu 335 with Trp 340). Substitution of Leu 335 and Thr 336 (the capping residues) with Gly completely eliminated the increased stability of the coiled-coil region observed in the presence of the neck-linker residues. Correspondingly, substitution of Trp 340, the first hydrophobic core d position residue of the coiled-coil, with an Ala residue resulted in a greater than expected decrease in stability and helicity of the coiled-coil structure. Subsequent analysis of the X-ray structure and substitution analysis of Lys 341 revealed that Trp 340 makes an important interchain hydrophobic interaction with Lys 341 of the opposite chain. Taken together these results reveal that a set of strong intraand inter-chain interactions made up of the helix "capping box," "hydrophobic staple," and the newly identified "Leu-Trp-Lys sandwich" motifs stabilize the kinesin neck coiled-coil structure, thus preventing it from fraying and unfolding. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).