Filamentous proteins

Figure 14.5 The domain organization of intermediate filament protein monomers. Most intermediate filament proteins share a similar rod domain that is usually about 310 amino acids long and forms an extended a helix. The amino-terminal and carboxy-terminal domains are non-a-helical and vary greatly in size and sequence in different intermediate filaments.

The leucine zipper DNA-binding proteins, described in Chapter 10, are examples of globular proteins that use coiled coils to form both homo- and heterodimers. A variety of fibrous proteins also have heptad repeats in their sequences and use coiled coils to form oligomers, mainly dimers and trimers. Among these are myosin, fibrinogen, actin cross-linking proteins such as spectrin and dystrophin as well as the intermediate filament proteins keratin, vimentin, desmin, and neurofilament proteins. 

Certain proteins endow cells with unique capabilities for movement. Cell division, muscle contraction, and cell motility represent some of the ways in which cells execute motion. The contractile and motile proteins underlying these motions share a common property they are filamentous or polymerize to form filaments. Examples include actin and myosin, the filamentous proteins forming the contractile systems of cells, and tubulin, the major component of microtubules (the filaments involved in the mitotic spindle of cell division as well as in flagella and cilia). Another class of proteins involved in movement includes dynein and kinesin, so-called motor proteins that drive the movement of vesicles, granules, and organelles along microtubules serving as established cytoskeletal tracks. ... 

Szent-Gyorgyi further showed that the viscosity of an actomyosin solution was lowered by the addition of ATP, indicating that ATP decreases myosin s affinity for actin. Kinetic studies demonstrated that myosin ATPase activity was increased substantially by actin. (For this reason, Szent-Gyorgyi gave the name actin to the thin filament protein.) The ATPase turnover number of pure myosin is 0.05/sec. In the presence of actin, however, the turnover number increases to about 10/sec, a number more like that of intact muscle fibers. 

Fibrin is an elastic filamentous protein elaborated from its precursor, fibrinogen, which is present in plasma at high concentration. Fibrin is formed in response to the actions of thrombin. Thrombin cleaves small peptides from the fibrinogen molecule, forming fibrin monomers that will begin to polymerize and become crosslinked. 

The major types of cytoskeletal filaments are 7-nm-thick microfilaments. 25-nm-thick microtubules, and 10-nm-thick intermediate filaments (IPs). These are respectively composed of actin, tubulin, and a variety of interrelated sparsely soluble fibrous proteins termed intermediate filament proteins. In addition, thick myosin filaments are present in large numbers in skeletal and heart muscle cells and in small numbers in many other types of eukaryotic cells. 

It is usually presumed that smooth muscle cells have only one kind of activity, contraction, and that the only alternative to contractile activity is a kind of estivating resting state (Figure 11). The actual situation is of course more complicated. For example, smooth muscles synthesize extracellular filament protein. They also proliferate, particularly in the cardiovascular system. Both of these processes require a considerable amount of control of the cellular economy. 

V. cholerae is a gram-negative bacillus. Vibrios pass through the stomach to colonize the upper small intestine. Vibrios have filamentous protein extensions that attach to receptors on the intestinal mucosa, and their motility assists with penetration of the mucus layer.2 The cholera enterotoxin consists of two subunits, one of which (subunit A) is transported into the cells and causes an increase in cyclic AMP, which leads to a deluge of fluid into the small intestine.20 This large volume of fluid results in the watery diarrhea that is characteristic of cholera. The stools are an electrolyte-rich isotonic fluid, the loss of which results in blood volume depletion followed by low blood pressure and shock.2 Of note, the diarrheal fluid is highly infectious. 

The fifth was a molecular biologist, who smiled sweetly and pointed out that all the others had missed the point. The frog jumps because of the biochemical properties of its muscles. The muscles are largely composed of two interdigitated filamentous proteins, actin and myosin, and they contract because the protein filaments slide past each other. This property of the actin and myosin is dependent on the amino acid composition of the two proteins, and hence on chemical, and thus on physical properties. In the last analysis, the molecular biologist insisted, following James Watson, we are all nothing but subatomic particles. 

Tao, T., Lamkin, M., and Schemer, C. (1984) Studies on the proximity relationships between thin filament proteins using benzophenone-4-maleimide as a site-specific photoreactive crosslinker. Biophys. J. 45,261. 

Dent, J. A., Poison, A. G., and Klymkowsky, M. W. (1989) A whole-mount immnnocytochemical analysis of the expression of the intermediate filament protein vimentin in Xenopns. Develop. 105, 61-74. 

The cytoskeleton is found near the axonal membrane and consists of microfilaments linked internally to microtubules and the plasma membrane by a network of filamentous protein that includes the brain-specific protein fodrin. This protein forms attachment sites for integral membrane proteins either by means of the neuronal cell adhesion molecule (N-CAM) or indirectly by means of a specific protein called ankyrin in the case of the sodium channels. This may provide a means whereby the sodium channels are concentrated in the region of the nodes of Ranvier. Thus the cortical cytoskeleton plays a vital role in neuronal function by acting as an attachment site for various receptors and ion channels, but also for s)maptic vesicles at nerve terminals, thereby providing a mechanism for concentrating the vesicles prior to the release of the neurotransmitter. 

Carnosine can affect gene expression. Ikeda et al. (1999) showed that carnosine markedly upregulates vimentin synthesis in cultured rat fibroblasts, while an association between carnosine and vimentin, a cytoskele-tal, intermediate filament protein has been noted in glial cells and neurons (Bonfanti et al., 1999). Interestingly, it has also been shown that the protease, oxidized protein hydrolase (OPH), is coexpressed with vimentin in COS cells (Shimizu et al., 2004). Thus, it is at least possible that carnosine could induce synthesis of OPH in the cultured human fibroblasts and thereby increase the cellular ability to eliminate oxidized... 

Fibrinolysis. The hydrolysis of an elastic, filamentous protein (fibrin) derived from fibrinogen by the action of thrombin, which releases fibrinopeptides A and B (co-fibrins A and B) from fibrinogen in co-agulation of the blood. 

Lendahl, U., Zimmerman, L.B., McKay, R.D. (1990). CNS stem cells express a new class of intermediate filament protein. Cell, 60, 585-95. 

An individual polypeptide in the a-keratin coiled coil has a relatively simple tertiary structure, dominated by an a-helical secondary structure with its helical axis twisted in a left-handed superhelix. The intertwining of the two a-helical polypeptides is an example of quaternary structure. Coiled coils of this type are common structural elements in filamentous proteins and in the muscle protein myosin (see Fig. 5-29). The quaternary structure of a-keratin can be quite complex. Many coiled coils can be assembled into large supramolecular complexes, such as the arrangement of a-keratin to form the intermediate filament of hair (Fig. 4-1 lb). 

Bacteria also contain filamentous proteins that resemble F-actin and which may be utilized for cell-shape determination 301c Actin-based motility is used by some bacteria and other pathogens during invasion of host cells (Box 19-C). It is employed by sperm cells of Ascaris and of C. elegans, which crawl by an ameboid movement that utilizes treadmilling of filaments formed from a motile sperm protein, which does not... 

The two-stranded a-helical coiled coil is now recognized as one of natures favorite ways of creating a dimerization motif and has been predicted to occur in a diverse group of over 200 proteins.111 This structure consists of two amphipathic, right-handed a-helices that adopt a left-handed supercoil, analogous to a two-stranded rope where the nonpolar face of each a-helix is continually adjacent to that of the other helix. 2 This structure was first postulated by Crick to explain the X-ray diffraction pattern of a-keratin in the absence of sequence information.Pl The coiled-coil dimerization motif is natures way of creating a rod-like molecule that perhaps plays only a structural role in many fibrous proteins, such as the kmef (keratin, myosin, epidermis, fibrinogen) class 3,4 and the intermediate filament proteins)5 6 ... 

McLachlan, A. D., and Stewart, M. (1982). Periodic charge distribution in the intermediate filament proteins desmin and vimentin./. Mol. Biol. 162, 693-698. 

Steinert, P. M., Chou, Y.-H., Prahlad, V., Parry, D. A. D., Marekov, L. N., Wu, K. C., Jang, S.-I., and Goldman, R. D. (1999b). A high molecular weight intermediate filament-associated protein in BHK-21 cells is nestin, a Type VI intermediate filament protein Limited co-assembly in vitro to form heteropolymers with Type III vimen-tin and Type IV a-Internexin./ Biol. Chem. 274, 9881-9890. 

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