Intracellular transport of vesicles and organelles along microtubules is powered by kinesin and cytoplasmic dynein molecular motors. Both motors can attach to the same cargo and thus must be coordinated to ensure proper distribution of intracellular materials. Although a number of hypotheses have been proposed to explain how these motors are coordinated, considerable uncertainty remains, in part because of the absence of methods for assessing motor subunit composition on individual vesicular cargos. We developed a robust quantitative immunofluorescence method based on subpixel colocalization to elucidate relative kinesin-1 and cytoplasmic dynein motor subunit composition of individual, endogenous amyloid precursor protein (APP) vesicles in mouse hippocampal cells. The resulting method and data allow us to test a key in vivo prediction of the hypothesis that APP can recruit kinesin-1 to APP vesicles in neuronal axons. We found that APP levels are well-correlated with the amount of the light chain of kinesin-1 (KLC1) and the heavy chain of cytoplasmic dynein (DHC1) on vesicles. In addition, genetic reduction of APP diminishes KLC1 and DHC1 levels on APP cargos. Finally, our data reveal that reduction of KLC1 leads to decreased levels of DHC1 on APP vesicles, suggesting that KLC1 is necessary for the association of DHC1 to these cargos, and help to explain previously reported retrograde transport defects generated when kinesin-1 is reduced.axonal transport | microtubule motor recruitment | Alzheimer's disease M icrotubule-based transport of vesicles and organelles in neurons is coordinated by kinesin (anterograde) and cytoplasmic dynein (retrograde) motor complexes. These motor proteins and their regulators play critical roles in long-distance signaling events in neurons, neuronal regeneration, and in the development of neurodegenerative disease (1-3). Several diseases in humans, such as hereditary spastic paraplegia (4), CharcotMarie-Tooth type 2 (5), and ALS-like motor degeneration (6), have been linked directly to mutations in genes encoding motor proteins. Additionally, disruption of transport is thought to be an early and perhaps causative event in Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson disease, and ALS, where axonal pathologies including abnormal accumulations of proteins and organelles have been routinely observed (1).Kinesin-1 is composed of heavy chain (KHC or KIF5) and light chain (KLC) subunits (7,8). Motor activity is executed by KHC, and cargo binding and regulatory activities are carried out by both KHC and KLC (9-11). Dynein is a large protein complex with six subunits: a large dynein heavy chain (DHC), an intermediate and light-intermediate chain (DIC and DLIC), and three dynein light chains (DLC) (12). Several types of vesicles, including amyloid precursor protein (APP) vesicles, depend upon kinesin-1 (9, 13-17) for their anterograde movement in axons. These studies raised the possibility that APP transport and its influence on APP proteolytic processing play an important role in the development of Alzheim...