Cross-linking and Fluorescence Study of the COOH- and NH2-terminal Domains of Intact Caldesmon Bound to Actin

Effect of Caldesmon on the Position and Myosin-induced Movement of Smooth Muscle Tropomyosin Bound to Actin

It is known that the actin-binding protein caldesmon inhibits actomyosin ATPase activity and might in this way take part in the thin filament regulation of smooth muscle contraction. Although the molecular mechanism of this inhibition is unknown, it is clear that the presence of actin-bound tropomyosin is necessary for full inhibition. Recent evidence also suggests that the myosin-induced movement of tropomyosin plays a key role in regulation. In this work, fluorescence studies provide evidence to show that caldesmon interacts with and alters the position of tropomyosin in a reconstituted actin thin filament and thereby limits the ability of myosin heads to move tropomyosin. Caldesmon interacts with the Cys-190 region in the COOH-terminal half of tropomyosin, resulting in the movement of this part of tropomyosin to a new position on actin. Additionally, this constrains the myosin-induced movement of this region of tropomyosin. On the other hand, caldesmon does not appear to interact with the Cys-36 region in the NH2-terminal half of tropomyosin and neither alters the position of nor significantly constrains the myosin-induced movement of this part of tropomyosin. The ability of caldesmon to limit the myosin-induced movement of tropomyosin provides a possible molecular basis for the inhibitory function of caldesmon. The different movements of the two halves of tropomyosin indicate that actin-bound tropomyosin moves as a flexible molecule and not as a rigid rod. Interestingly, caldesmon, which inhibits tropomyosin's potentiation of actomyosin ATPase activity, moves tropomyosin in one direction, whereas myosin heads, which enhance potentiation, move tropomyosin in the opposite direction.

Modes of Caldesmon Binding to Actin

Smooth muscle caldesmon binds actin and inhibits actomyosin ATPase activity. Phosphorylation of caldesmon by extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) reverses this inhibitory effect and weakens actin binding. To better understand this function, we have examined the phosphorylation-dependent contact sites of caldesmon on actin by low dose electron microscopy and three-dimensional reconstruction of actin filaments decorated with a C-terminal fragment, hH32K, of human caldesmon containing the principal actin-binding domains. Helical reconstruction of negatively stained filaments demonstrated that hH32K is located on the inner portion of actin subdomain 1, traversing its upper surface toward the C-terminal segment of actin, and forms a bridge to the neighboring actin monomer of the adjacent long pitch helical strand by connecting to its subdomain 3. Such lateral binding was supported by cross-linking experiments using a mutant isoform, which was capable of cross-linking actin subunits. Upon ERK phosphorylation, however, the mutant no longer cross-linked actin to polymers. Three-dimensional reconstruction of ERK-phosphorylated hH32K indeed indicated loss of the interstrand connectivity. These results, together with fluorescence quenching data, are consistent with a phosphorylation-dependent conformational change that moves the C-terminal end segment of caldesmon near the phosphorylation site but not the upstream region around Cys(595), away from F-actin, thus neutralizing its inhibitory effect on actomyosin interactions. The binding pattern of hH32K suggests a mechanism by which unphosphorylated, but not ERK-phosphorylated, caldesmon could stabilize actin filaments and resist F-actin severing or depolymerization in both smooth muscle and nonmuscle cells.

Phosphorylation of smooth muscle myosin heads regulates the head-induced movement of tropomyosin

It has been shown that skeletal and smooth muscle myosin heads binding to actin results in the movement of smooth muscle tropomyosin, as revealed by a change in fluorescence resonance energy transfer between a fluorescence donor on tropomyosin and an acceptor on actin (Graceffa, P. (1999) Biochemistry 38, 11984-11992). In this work, tropomyosin movement was similarly monitored as a function of unphosphorylated and phosphorylated smooth muscle myosin double-headed fragment smHMM. In the absence of nucleotide and at low myosin head/actin ratios, only phosphorylated heads induced a change in energy transfer. In the presence of ADP, the effect of head phosphorylation was even more dramatic, in that at all levels of myosin head/actin, phosphorylation was necessary to affect energy transfer. It is proposed that the regulation of tropomyosin position on actin by phosphorylation of myosin heads plays a key role in the regulation of smooth muscle contraction. In contrast, actin-bound caldesmon was not moved by myosin heads at low head/actin ratios, as uncovered by fluorescence resonance energy transfer and disulfide cross-linking between caldesmon and actin. At higher head concentration caldesmon was dissociated from actin, consistent with the multiple binding model for the binding of caldesmon and myosin heads to actin (Chen, Y., and Chalovich, J. M. (1992) Biophys. J. 63, 1063-1070).

Movement of smooth muscle tropomyosin by myosin heads

It has been proposed that during the activation of muscle contraction the initial binding of myosin heads to the actin thin filament contributes to switching on the thin filament and that this might involve the movement of actin-bound tropomyosin. The movement of smooth muscle tropomyosin on actin was investigated in this work by measuring the change in distance between specific residues on tropomyosin and actin by fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) as a function of myosin head binding to actin. An energy transfer acceptor was attached to Cys374 of actin and a donor to the tropomyosin heterodimer at either Cys36 of the beta-chain or Cys190 of the alpha-chain. FRET changed for the donor at both positions of tropomyosin upon addition of skeletal or smooth muscle myosin heads, indicating a movement of the whole tropomyosin molecule. The changes in FRET were hyperbolic and saturated at about one head per seven actin subunits, indicating that each head cooperatively affects several tropomyosin molecules, presumably via tropomyosin's end-to-end interaction. ATP, which dissociates myosin from actin, completely reversed the changes in FRET induced by heads, whereas in the presence of ADP the effect of heads was the same as in its absence. The results indicate that myosin with and without ADP, intermediates in the myosin ATPase hydrolytic pathway, are effective regulators of tropomyosin position, which might play a role in the regulation of smooth muscle contraction.

Phosphorylation changes the spatial relationship between Glu124-Arg143 and Cys18 and Cys165 of the regulatory light chain in smooth muscle myosin

Regulatory light chain (RLC) mutants, RLC-C18 and RLC-C165, containing a single cysteine at positions 18 and 165 near the N and C terminus, respectively, were each labeled with benzophenone 4-iodoacetamide and exchanged into myosin in their phosphorylated or unphosphorylated forms and then photolyzed. SDS-PAGE showed that, for RLC-C18, the intrachain photo-cross-linking in myosin was inhibited by phosphorylation. For myosin containing RLC-C165, the yield of one intrachain cross-linked band decreased significantly whereas the other was unaffected by phosphorylation. Peptide mapping in conjunction with mass spectrometry showed that Cys165 was cross-linked to site(s) within Ala17-Lys34 independent of the phosphorylation of Ser19. This clearly demonstrates that the proximity between the N- and C-terminal regions of RLC is not affected by phosphorylation. In addition, Cys165 could also be cross-linked to the region of Phe133-Arg143; however, this type of cross-linking was inhibited in the phosphorylated state. For RLC-C18, the cross-linking took place with the region of Glu124-Arg132 or Phe133-Arg143, also only in the unphosphorylated state. Thus, phosphorylation changes the spatial relationship between the region of Glu124-Arg143 and Cys18 and Cys165. In scallop myosin, the region corresponding to Glu124-Arg143 is located at the interfaces between RLC and the essential light chain as well as the heavy chain [Xie, X. , et al. (1994) Nature 368, 306-312]. In light of that work, our results suggest that the region of Glu124-Arg143 is involved in the phosphorylation-dependent signaling and the change in its spatial relationship with respect to the N and C termini of RLC may underlie the activation of the smooth muscle myosin.

Arrangement of the COOH-terminal and NH2-terminal domains of caldesmon bound to actin

Smooth muscle caldesmon is a single polypeptide chain with its NH2- and COOH-terminal domains separated by a long alpha-helix. Caldesmon was labeled at either Cys-153 in the NH2 domain or Cys-580 in the COOH domain with a variety of fluorescence probes. Fluorescence intensity, peak position, and polarization of probes on Cys-580 were very sensitive to the binding to actin (with or without tropomyosin), whereas for probes on Cys-153, there was a lack of response, in reconstituted or native actin thin filaments. From fluorescence resonance energy transfer from donor labels on either caldesmon cysteine to acceptor labels on Cys-374 of actin, the distance between the donor and acceptor was estimated to be 27 A for the donor at Cys-580 and 65-80 A for the donor at Cys-153. These findings were the same for caldesmon prepared with or without heat treatment and with striated or smooth muscle actin. These results, together with previous knowledge that COOH-terminal fragments of caldesmon bind to actin whereas NH2-terminal fragments do not, indicate that, while the COOH domain of caldesmon is bound to actin, the NH2 domain is largely dissociated. Fluorescence quenching studies showed that actin binding to caldesmon greatly decreased the accessibility of probes at caldesmon Cys-580 to the quencher, whereas for probes at Cys-153, actin afforded much less, but significant, protection from quenching. Consequently, it appears that, although the NH2 domain is mostly dissociated, it spends some time in the vicinity of actin, through either a weak interaction with actin or collisions with actin and/or because of restricted flexibility which constrains the NH2 domain to be close to the actin filament. Since the NH2 domain of caldesmon binds to the neck region of myosin, a dissociated NH2 domain may account for caldesmon's ability to link myosin and actin filaments.

Strong interaction between caldesmon and calponin

Caldesmon was labeled at either Cys-153 in the NH2-terminal domain or Cys-580 in the COOH-terminal domain with a 6-acryloyl-2-dimethylaminonaphthalene (acrylodan) fluorescence probe. The addition of smooth muscle calponin to Cys-580-labeled caldesmon resulted in an 18% drop in fluorescence intensity, which titrated with a stoichiometry of 0.9 and a binding constant of 9.5 x 10(7) M-1. For Cys-153-labeled caldesmon, there was no change in fluorescence upon adding calponin. These findings indicate strong binding between calponin and the COOH-domain of caldesmon. The association was sensitive to ionic strength, suggesting that ionic interactions between calponin, a basic protein, and caldesmon, an acidic protein, contribute to the stabilization of the protein complex. That non-muscle acidic calponin interacts with caldesmon with a much reduced association constant of 3.5 x 10(6) M-1 supports such a model. The binding between acidic calponin and caldesmon is strengthened to 1.8 x 10(7) M-1 in the presence of Ca2+, which might bind to acidic residues of the calponin and partially neutralize its negative charge. The strong, specific binding between calponin and caldesmon suggests that this interaction occurs within smooth muscle cells and possibly plays a role in the regulation of contraction.