Heterogeneity of tropomyosin and actin in normal and diseased muscle

Heterogeneity of human skeletal muscle tropomyosin

Six polypeptides resolved by two-dimensional electrophoresis of homogenates from human skeletal muscle have been identified as tropomyosin by electrophoretic and immunochemical methods. The 6 proteins are consistently present in approximately the same abundance in normal biceps, deltoid, gastrocnemius, and quadriceps muscle. Analysis of samples from individuals with Becker's dystrophy, Duchenne dystrophy, limb girdle dystrophy, polymyositis, myopathy related to vitamin E deficiency, type II fiber deficiency, and from an infant with indistinct fiber type differentiation, however, showed quantitative variations in the tropomyosin pattern. Muscle with histochemically demonstrated type II fiber deficiency lacked two of the normal tropomyosin proteins and the type II myosin light chains. Muscles lacking type I myosin light chains were deficient in a different pair of tropomyosin proteins. The results suggest that normal human skeletal muscle contains one major type of tropomyosin protein (beta-tropomyosin) common to both fast and slow fibers, together with two other major proteins (alpha-tropomyosin and alpha'-tropomyosin), one of which is specific to fast fibers and the other to slow fibers. Preliminary data from the reaction of muscle homogenates with alkaline phosphatase indicate that 3 of the 6 tropomyosin polypeptides resolved by two-dimensional electrophoresis are phosphorylated forms of the alpha-, alpha'-, and beta-tropomyosins.

The interaction of unregulated actin and myosin in avian muscular dystrophy

The presence of an altered form of the heavy chain component of myosin subfragment-1 (S-1) in avian dystrophic pectoral muscle was confirmed by Triton-urea-acetic acid polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The potential functional significance of this altered form of S-1 was evaluated by measuring the ATPase activity of the unregulated acto-S-1 complex using all possible pairwise combinations of actin and S-1 from normal (N) and dystrophic (D) muscle. (NN, DD, ND, DN, where the first letter designates the actin and the second letter the S-1). With conventionally purified actin and S-1, NN not equal to DD not equal to ND not equal to DN, implying both N actin not equal to D actin and N S-1 not equal to D S-1 functionally. An alternate purification scheme for actin resulted in preparations from normal and dystrophic muscles of actin Mg-polymers with the same rheology (viscosity vs shear rate) and critical concentration for polymerization. When these actins were combined with more highly purified preparations of S-1, the adenosine triphosphatase (ATPase) activity of the acto-S-1 complex did not vary with changes in the pairwise composition and responded similarly to variation of the actin or adenosine triphosphate (ATP) concentration. In experiments with actin activation of intact myosin, no differences were observed between myosin from normal vs dystrophic muscle. The different isozymes of myosin present in normal and dystrophic chicken pectoral muscles are functionally equivalent as ATPases in their interactions with unregulated actin.