KIF5B review notes

Curation scope

Falcon deep research was attempted with just deep-research-falcon human KIF5B, but the
provider timed out after 600 seconds and did not generate KIF5B-deep-research-falcon.md.
This review therefore relies on cached publications, UniProt/GOA-derived files, PN project
mappings, and these manual curation notes.

Core function

KIF5B encodes the ubiquitous kinesin-1 heavy chain. The core gene product role is
plus-end-directed, ATP-dependent movement on microtubules as part of the kinesin-1
motor complex, with broad cargo transport roles. Early cloning and localization work
showed human kinesin heavy chain coaligned with microtubules in transfected cells
PMID:1607388, and structural work on the human kinesin motor domain supports the conserved ATPase motor mechanism
PMID:8606779.

KIF5B is pleiotropic because kinesin-1 transports many cargos. The best-supported
process-level abstraction for the canonical role is vesicle/organelle transport along
microtubules rather than any one cargo-specific downstream phenotype.

Proteostasis network context

The Proteostasis Network places KIF5B under
Autophagy-Lysosome Pathway|Autophagic lysosome reformation|Lysosomal tubulation.
The PN mapping marks this row as context_only and too_broad_to_propagate to
GO:0007040 lysosome organization. That restraint is appropriate: KIF5B has strong
evidence for kinesin-dependent lysosome positioning/localization, but the current
evidence does not make KIF5B a specific autophagic lysosome reformation or lysosomal
tubulation factor in the same way as a dedicated ALR machinery component.

The direct lysosome evidence is that Arl8/SKIP recruits kinesin-1 to lysosomes and
that KIF5B knockdown causes lysosomes to cluster near the microtubule-organizing
center PMID:22172677.
In NK cells, Arl8b identifies KIF5B as a binding partner and KIF5B silencing blocks
MTOC-lytic granule polarization and reduces cytotoxicity
PMID:24088571.

Annotation decisions

• Accept the kinesin complex and plus-end-directed microtubule motor role as core.
• Modify generic MF annotations such as microtubule motor activity, ATP binding,
  and microtubule binding to the more informative
  GO:0008574 plus-end-directed microtubule motor activity.
• Modify broad microtubule-based movement to
  GO:0047496 vesicle transport along microtubule where a process replacement is
  needed.
• Keep lysosomal membrane, cytolytic granule membrane, lysosome localization,
  centrosome positioning, channel-trafficking, stress granule, mitochondrial, and
  neuronal cargo annotations as non-core cargo/context-specific roles.
• Mark generic protein binding, identical protein binding,
  protein-containing complex binding, cadherin binding, and broad high-throughput
  membrane as over-annotated because they do not describe KIF5B's molecular role.
• Do not add a new GO:0007040 lysosome organization annotation from the PN
  lysosomal-tubulation row; the PN project intentionally treats this row as
  context-only.

Description cleanup note

The YAML description field was revised to keep it as a standalone biological summary. Project-specific curation framing moved here instead.

• Moved out of the YAML description: for Proteostasis Network curation, the supported lysosomal role is kinesin-dependent lysosome localization/positioning; the PN lysosomal-tubulation row is context-only and should not be propagated to a new lysosome-organization annotation for KIF5B without more direct ALR-specific evidence.