Requirements for in Vitro Assembly

An interesting feature of the rod is that only a very limited region is responsible for myosin s insolubility at low ionic strength. The sequence required to confer assembly properties to the smooth muscle myosin rod 

Kinetic studies have shown that filament initiation is more difficult than subsequent elongation (Cross et al., 1991). In a system where assembly-disassembly might play a large role, for example, in nonmuscle vertebrate cells, this property predicts that the rate at which monomers become available for polymerization could alter both the number and length of myosin filaments that are formed. Thus control of kinase activity, which controls the number of assembly competent extended monomers, could be a factor in determining subsequent polymerization. 

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