Myosin monomer

Myosin may be extracted via high-ionic-strength buffers and purified. Synthetic thick filaments of myosin spontaneously assemble upon lowering the ionic strength of its solution, exhibiting the morphological characteristics of native thick filaments. This process initiates with myosin monomers assembled into parallel dimers. The dimers assemble into antiparallel tetramers, the tetramers into octamers, and the octamers into minifilaments... 

Figure 19-10 (A) An approximate scale drawing of the myosin molecule. The "hinge" is a region that is rapidly attacked by trypsin to yield the light and heavy meromyosins (LMM and HMM). Total length -160 nm, molecular mass, 470 kDa two -200-kDa heavy chains two pairs of 16- to 21-kDa light chains heads -15 x 4 x 3 nm. (B) Electron micrograph of rabbit myosin monomers that became dissociated from thick filaments in the presence of ATP, fixed and shadowed with platinum.127 Courtesy of Tsuyoshi Katoh.

ATPase activity functional unit is bipolar aggregate of 10 to 500 myosin monomers some types are activated by phosphorylation encoded by multigene family. 

LC20 phosphorylation produces two pronounced effects it promotes the ability of myosin monomers to assemble into filaments, and it markedly increases (100-fold) the ATPase activity of myosin compared to un-phosphorylated filamentous myosin. How unphosphory-lated myosin filaments can remain stable is not certain, but may be related to binding to myosin of independently expressed MLCK fragments containing the myosin binding domain of MLCK. How LC20 phosphorylation increases the ATPase activity so dramatically is still unknown. 

Fig. 4. Myosin filament structure. Dit rams of myosin monomer packing in non-helical side-polar and helical bipolar filaments. For simplicity, only one myosin head per monomer is shown. A bare zone is observed at the center of the bi-polar filament, and at each end of the side-polar filament...

Calcium-dependent regulation involves the calcium-calmodulin complex that activates smooth muscle MLCK, a monomer of approximately 135 kDa. Dephosphorylation is initiated by MLCP. MLCP is a complex of three proteins a 110-130 kDa myosin phosphatase targeting and regulatory subunit (MYPT1), a 37 kDa catalytic subunit (PP-1C) and a 20 kDa subunit of unknown function. In most cases, calcium-independent regulation of smooth muscle tone is achieved by inhibition of MLCP activity at constant calcium level inducing an increase in phospho-rMLC and contraction (Fig. 1). 

Skeletal muscle myosin-Il was first purified in the 1930s and has been extensively studied since (Engelhardt and Ljubimova, 1939). Myosin-II is a dimer composed of two molecules of myosin joined by intertwined, filamentous tails, with each monomer containing two pairs of light chains (Figure 2) (Adelstein and... 

Actin is a 42 kDa bent dumbbell-shaped globular monomer which is found in most eukaryotic cells. It is the primary protein of the thin (or actin) filaments. Also, by mass or molarity, actin is the largest constituent of the contractile apparatus, actually reaching millimolar concentrations. Actins from different sources seem to be more similar than myosins from the same sources. Actin binds ATP which is hydrolyzed to ADP, if the monomeric actin polymerizes. The backbone structure of the actin filament is a helix formed by two linear strands of polymerized actins like two strings of actin beads entwined. 

Figure 8. (Continued). As described above, the packing of myosin molecules into the thick filament is such that a layer of heads is seen every 14.3 nm, and this reflection is thought to derive from this packing. Off the meridian the 42.9 nm myosin based layer line is shown. This arises from the helical pitch of the thick filament, due to the way in which the myosin molecules pack into the filament. The helical pitch is 42.9 nm. c) Meridional reflections from actin. Actin based layer lines can be seen at 35.5 nm, 5.9 nm and 5.1 nm (1st, 6th, and 7th layer lines)and they all arise from the various helical repeats along the thin filament. Only the 35.5 nm layer line is shown here.The 5.9 nm and 5.1 nm layer lines arise from the monomeric repeat. The 35.5 nm layer line arises from the long pitch helical repeat and is roughly equivalent to seven actin monomers. A meridional spot at 2.8 nm can also be seen, d) The equatorial reflections, 1,0 and 1,1 which arise from the spacings between crystal planes seen in cross section of muscle.

Figure 49-3. Schematic representation of the thin fiiament, showing the spatiai configuration of its three major protein components actin, myosin, and tropomyosin. The upper panei shows individual molecules of G-actin. The middle panel shows actin monomers assembled into F-actin. Individual molecules of tropomyosin (two strands wound around one another) and of troponin (made up of its three subunits) are also shown. The lower panel shows the assembled thin filament, consisting of F-actin, tropomyosin, and the three subunits of troponin (TpC, Tpl, andTpT).

Actin filaments are the thinnest of the cytoskeletal filaments, and therefore also called microfilaments. Polymerized actin monomers form long, thin fibers of about 8 nm in diameter. Along with the above-mentioned function of the cytoskeleton, actin interacts with myosin ( thick ) filaments in skeletal muscle fibers to provide the force of muscular contraction. Actin/Myosin interactions also help produce cytoplasmic streaming in most cells. 

Contractile proteins which form the myofibrils are of two types myosin ( thick filaments each approximately 12 nm in diameter and 1.5 (im long) and actin ( thin filaments 6nm diameter and 1 (Am in length). These two proteins are found not only in muscle cells but widely throughout tissues being part of the cytoskeleton of all cell types. Filamentous actin (F-actin) is a polymer composed of two entwined chains each composed of globular actin (G-actin) monomers. Skeletal muscle F-actin has associated with it two accessory proteins, tropomyosin and troponin complex which are not found in smooth muscle, and which act to regulate the contraction cycle (Figure 7.1). 

Figure 13.7 A diagram of the actin helix showing position of the tropomyosin. Both actin chains are flanked by tropomyosin molecules, which are long string-like molecules that span seven actin monomers. The troponin complex is attached to the tropomyosin but is not shown. From this diagram, it should be clear how the tropomyosin molecule can conceal the actin-binding sites for the myosin cross-bridges in the relaxed condition. A small conformational change in tropomyosin exposes the sites for attachment of the cross-bridges.

The diffraction data were also used to guide the selection of the best preserved e.m. images of decorated actin which were then used for a 3-D reconstruction (Amos et al., 1982). In this work, it was suggested that a myosin head interacts with two actin monomers (while still retaining a 1 1 stoichiometry), but this point has not been proved definitively. 

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