Neutron diffraction measurements of skeletal muscle using the contrast variation technique: analysis of the equatorial diffraction patterns

Titin strain contributes to the Frank-Starling law of the heart by structural rearrangements of both thin- and thick-filament proteins

The Frank-Starling mechanism of the heart is due, in part, to modulation of myofilament Ca(2+) sensitivity by sarcomere length (SL) [length-dependent activation (LDA)]. The molecular mechanism(s) that underlie LDA are unknown. Recent evidence has implicated the giant protein titin in this cellular process, possibly by positioning the myosin head closer to actin. To clarify the role of titin strain in LDA, we isolated myocardium from either WT or homozygous mutant (HM) rats that express a giant splice isoform of titin, and subjected the muscles to stretch from 2.0 to 2.4 μm of SL. Upon stretch, HM compared with WT muscles displayed reduced passive force, twitch force, and myofilament LDA. Time-resolved small-angle X-ray diffraction measurements of WT twitching muscles during diastole revealed stretch-induced increases in the intensity of myosin (M2 and M6) and troponin (Tn3) reflections, as well as a reduction in cross-bridge radial spacing. Independent fluorescent probe analyses in relaxed permeabilized myocytes corroborated these findings. X-ray electron density reconstruction revealed increased mass/ordering in both thick and thin filaments. The SL-dependent changes in structure observed in WT myocardium were absent in HM myocardium. Overall, our results reveal a correlation between titin strain and the Frank-Starling mechanism. The molecular basis underlying this phenomenon appears not to involve interfilament spacing or movement of myosin toward actin but, rather, sarcomere stretch-induced simultaneous structural rearrangements within both thin and thick filaments that correlate with titin strain and myofilament LDA.

Head-head interactions of resting myosin crossbridges in intact frog skeletal muscles, revealed by synchrotron x-ray fiber diffraction

The intensities of the myosin-based layer lines in the x-ray diffraction patterns from live resting frog skeletal muscles with full thick-thin filament overlap from which partial lattice sampling effects had been removed were analyzed to elucidate the configurations of myosin crossbridges around the thick filament backbone to nanometer resolution. The repeat of myosin binding protein C (C-protein) molecules on the thick filaments was determined to be 45.33 nm, slightly longer than that of myosin crossbridges. With the inclusion of structural information for C-proteins and a pre-powerstroke head shape, modeling in terms of a mixed population of regular and perturbed regions of myosin crown repeats along the filament revealed that the myosin filament had azimuthal perturbations of crossbridges in addition to axial perturbations in the perturbed region, producing pseudo-six-fold rotational symmetry in the structure projected down the filament axis. Myosin crossbridges had a different organization about the filament axis in each of the regular and perturbed regions. In the regular region that lacks C-proteins, there were inter-molecular interactions between the myosin heads in axially adjacent crown levels. In the perturbed region that contains C-proteins, in addition to inter-molecular interactions between the myosin heads in the closest adjacent crown levels, there were also intra-molecular interactions between the paired heads on the same crown level. Common features of the interactions in both regions were interactions between a portion of the 50-kDa-domain and part of the converter domain of the myosin heads, similar to those found in the phosphorylation-regulated invertebrate myosin. These interactions are primarily electrostatic and the converter domain is responsible for the head-head interactions. Thus multiple head-head interactions of myosin crossbridges also characterize the switched-off state and have an important role in the regulation or other functions of myosin in thin filament-regulated muscles as well as in the thick filament-regulated muscles.