Like a wrench that gums up the gears, a common anaesthetic keeps the motor proteins in your cells from making their rounds.
This is not necessarily a bad thing, but how it works has been a mystery until now.
Researchers at Rice’s Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) detail the mechanism that allows propofol — the general anaesthetic injected to knock you out before surgery — to halt the movement of kinesin proteins that deliver cargoes along microtubules to the far reaches of cells.

Researchers simulated the mechanism that allows propofol, a common anesthetic, to halt the movement of kinesin