Nature's strategy for optimizing power generation in insect flight muscle

Taking flight: an educational primer for use with "A novel mechanism for activation of myosin regulatory light chain by protein kinase C-delta in Drosophila"

Muscles are required for animal movement, feeding, heartbeat, and reproduction. Disruption of muscle function can lead to mobility impairments and diseases like muscular dystrophy and cardiac myopathy; therefore, research in this area has significant implications for public health. Recent work by Vaziri and colleagues has taken genetic, cell biological, and biochemical approaches to identify Protein kinase C-d (Pkcδ) as a novel regulator of the essential myosin light chain 2 (MLC2) by phosphorylation. The authors determine which residues of MLC2 are modified by Pkcδ and show that phosphorylation by Pkcδ is required for proper sarcomere assembly and function. This study underscores the importance of Drosophila melanogaster as a model system for muscle function and highlights how protein phosphorylation is a vital part of post-translational gene regulation.

Flightin maintains myofilament lattice organization required for optimal flight power and courtship song quality in Drosophila

The indirect flight muscles (IFMs) of Drosophila and other insects with asynchronous flight muscles are characterized by a crystalline myofilament lattice structure. The high-order lattice regularity is considered an adaptation for enhanced power output, but supporting evidence for this claim is lacking. We show that IFMs from transgenic flies expressing flightin with a deletion of its poorly conserved N-terminal domain (fln^ΔN62 ) have reduced inter-thick filament spacing and a less regular lattice. This resulted in a decrease in flight ability by 33% and in skinned fibre oscillatory power output by 57%, but had no effect on wingbeat frequency or frequency of maximum power output, suggesting that the underlying actomyosin kinetics is not affected and that the flight impairment arises from deficits in force transmission. Moreover, we show that fln^ΔN62 males produced an abnormal courtship song characterized by a higher sine song frequency and a pulse song with longer pulses and longer inter-pulse intervals (IPIs), the latter implicated in male reproductive success. When presented with a choice, wild-type females chose control males over mutant males in 92% of the competition events. These results demonstrate that flightin N-terminal domain is required for optimal myofilament lattice regularity and IFM activity, enabling powered flight and courtship song production. As the courtship song is subject to female choice, we propose that the low amino acid sequence conservation of the N-terminal domain reflects its role in fine-tuning species-specific courtship songs.

An embryonic myosin isoform enables stretch activation and cyclical power in Drosophila jump muscle

The mechanism behind stretch activation (SA), a mechanical property that increases muscle force and oscillatory power generation, is not known. We used Drosophila transgenic techniques and our new muscle preparation, the jump muscle, to determine if myosin heavy chain isoforms influence the magnitude and rate of SA force generation. We found that Drosophila jump muscles show very low SA force and cannot produce positive power under oscillatory conditions at pCa 5.0. However, we transformed the jump muscle to be moderately stretch-activatable by replacing its myosin isoform with an embryonic isoform (EMB). Expressing EMB, jump muscle SA force increased by 163% and it generated net positive power. The rate of SA force development decreased by 58% with EMB expression. Power generation is Pi dependent as >4 mM Pi was required for positive power from EMB. Pi increased EMB SA force, but not wild-type SA force. Our data suggest that when muscle expressing EMB is stretched, EMB is more easily driven backward to a weakly bound state than wild-type jump muscle. This increases the number of myosin heads available to rapidly bind to actin and contribute to SA force generation. We conclude that myosin heavy chain isoforms influence both SA kinetics and SA force, which can determine if a muscle is capable of generating oscillatory power at a fixed calcium concentration.

Mechanical analysis of Drosophila indirect flight and jump muscles

The genetic advantages of Drosophila make it a very appealing choice for investigating muscle development, muscle physiology and muscle protein structure and function. To take full advantage of this model organism, it has been vital to develop isolated Drosophila muscle preparations that can be mechanically evaluated. We describe techniques to isolate, prepare and mechanically analyze skinned muscle fibers from two Drosophila muscle types, the indirect flight muscle and the jump muscle. The function of the indirect flight muscle is similar to vertebrate cardiac muscle, to generate power in an oscillatory manner. The indirect flight muscle is ideal for evaluating the influence of protein mutations on muscle and cross-bridge stiffness, oscillatory power, and deriving cross-bridge rate constants. Jump muscle physiology and structure are more similar to skeletal vertebrate muscle than indirect flight muscle, and it is ideal for measuring maximum shortening velocity, force-velocity characteristics and steady-state power generation.

Aging enhances indirect flight muscle fiber performance yet decreases flight ability in Drosophila

We investigated the effects of aging on Drosophila melanogaster indirect flight muscle from the whole organism to the actomyosin cross-bridge. Median-aged (49-day-old) flies were flight impaired, had normal myofilament number and packing, barely longer sarcomeres, and slight mitochondrial deterioration compared with young (3-day-old) flies. Old (56-day-old) flies were unable to beat their wings, had deteriorated ultrastructure with severe mitochondrial damage, and their skinned fibers failed to activate with calcium. Small-amplitude sinusoidal length perturbation analysis showed median-aged indirect flight muscle fibers developed greater than twice the isometric force and power output of young fibers, yet cross-bridge kinetics were similar. Large increases in elastic and viscous moduli amplitude under active, passive, and rigor conditions suggest that median-aged fibers become stiffer longitudinally. Small-angle x-ray diffraction indicates that myosin heads move increasingly toward the thin filament with age, accounting for the increased transverse stiffness via cross-bridge formation. We propose that the observed protein composition changes in the connecting filaments, which anchor the thick filaments to the Z-disk, produce compensatory increases in longitudinal stiffness, isometric tension, power and actomyosin interaction in aging indirect flight muscle. We also speculate that a lack of MgATP due to damaged mitochondria accounts for the decreased flight performance.