Purification, crystallization and preliminary X-ray crystallographic analysis of squid heavy meromyosin

Variants of the myosin interacting-heads motif

Under relaxing conditions, the two heads of myosin II interact with each other and with the proximal part (S2) of the myosin tail, establishing the interacting-heads motif (IHM), found in myosin molecules and thick filaments of muscle and nonmuscle cells. The IHM is normally thought of as a single, unique structure, but there are several variants. In the simplest ("canonical") IHM, occurring in most relaxed thick filaments and in heavy meromyosin, the interacting heads bend back and interact with S2, and the motif lies parallel to the filament surface. In one variant, occurring in insect indirect flight muscle, there is no S2-head interaction and the motif is perpendicular to the filament. In a second variant, found in smooth and nonmuscle single myosin molecules in their inhibited (10S) conformation, S2 is shifted ∼20 Å from the canonical form and the tail folds twice and wraps around the interacting heads. These molecule and filament IHM variants have important energetic and pathophysiological consequences. (1) The canonical motif, with S2-head interaction, correlates with the super-relaxed (SRX) state of myosin. The absence of S2-head interaction in insects may account for the lower stability of this IHM and apparent absence of SRX in indirect flight muscle, contributing to the quick initiation of flight in insects. (2) The ∼20 Å shift of S2 in 10S myosin molecules means that S2-head interactions are different from those in the canonical IHM. This variant therefore cannot be used to analyze the impact of myosin mutations on S2-head interactions that occur in filaments, as has been proposed. It can be used, instead, to analyze the structural impact of mutations in smooth and nonmuscle myosin.

Lessons from a tarantula: new insights into muscle thick filament and myosin interacting-heads motif structure and function

The tarantula skeletal muscle X-ray diffraction pattern suggested that the myosin heads were helically arranged on the thick filaments. Electron microscopy (EM) of negatively stained relaxed tarantula thick filaments revealed four helices of heads allowing a helical 3D reconstruction. Due to its low resolution (5.0 nm), the unambiguous interpretation of densities of both heads was not possible. A resolution increase up to 2.5 nm, achieved by cryo-EM of frozen-hydrated relaxed thick filaments and an iterative helical real space reconstruction, allowed the resolving of both heads. The two heads, "free" and "blocked", formed an asymmetric structure named the "interacting-heads motif" (IHM) which explained relaxation by self-inhibition of both heads ATPases. This finding made tarantula an exemplar system for thick filament structure and function studies. Heads were shown to be released and disordered by Ca²⁺-activation through myosin regulatory light chain phosphorylation, leading to EM, small angle X-ray diffraction and scattering, and spectroscopic and biochemical studies of the IHM structure and function. The results from these studies have consequent implications for understanding and explaining myosin super-relaxed state and thick filament activation and regulation. A cooperative phosphorylation mechanism for activation in tarantula skeletal muscle, involving swaying constitutively Ser35 mono-phosphorylated free heads, explains super-relaxation, force potentiation and post-tetanic potentiation through Ser45 mono-phosphorylated blocked heads. Based on this mechanism, we propose a swaying-swinging, tilting crossbridge-sliding filament for tarantula muscle contraction.

Sequential myosin phosphorylation activates tarantula thick filament via a disorder-order transition

Phosphorylation of myosin regulatory light chain (RLC) N-terminal extension (NTE) activates myosin in thick filaments. RLC phosphorylation plays a primary regulatory role in smooth muscles and a secondary (modulatory) role in striated muscles, which is regulated by Ca(2+)via TnC/TM on the thin filament. Tarantula striated muscle exhibits both regulatory systems: one switches on/off contraction through thin filament regulation, and another through PKC constitutively Ser35 phosphorylated swaying free heads in the thick filaments that produces quick force on twitches regulated from 0 to 50% and modulation is accomplished recruiting additional force-potentiating free and blocked heads via Ca(2+)4-CaM-MLCK Ser45 phosphorylation. We have used microsecond molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of tarantula RLC NTE to understand the structural basis for phosphorylation-based regulation in tarantula thick filament activation. Trajectory analysis revealed that an inter-domain salt bridge network (R39/E58,E61) facilitates the formation of a stable helix-coil-helix (HCH) motif formed by helices P and A in the unphosphorylated NTE of both myosin heads. Phosphorylation of the blocked head on Ser45 does not induce any substantial structural changes. However, phosphorylation of the free head on Ser35 disrupts this salt bridge network and induces a partial extension of helix P along RLC helix A. While not directly participating in the HCH folding, phosphorylation of Ser35 unlocks a compact structure and allows the NTE to spontaneously undergo coil-helix transitions. The modest structural change induced by the subsequent Ser45 diphosphorylation monophosphorylated Ser35 free head facilitates full helix P extension into a single structurally stable α-helix through a network of intra-domain salt bridges (pS35/R38,R39,R42). We conclude that tarantula thick filament activation is controlled by sequential Ser35-Ser45 phosphorylation via a conserved disorder-to-order transition.

Conserved Intramolecular Interactions Maintain Myosin Interacting-Heads Motifs Explaining Tarantula Muscle Super-Relaxed State Structural Basis

Tarantula striated muscle is an outstanding system for understanding the molecular organization of myosin filaments. Three-dimensional reconstruction based on cryo-electron microscopy images and single-particle image processing revealed that, in a relaxed state, myosin molecules undergo intramolecular head-head interactions, explaining why head activity switches off. The filament model obtained by rigidly docking a chicken smooth muscle myosin structure to the reconstruction was improved by flexibly fitting an atomic model built by mixing structures from different species to a tilt-corrected 2-nm three-dimensional map of frozen-hydrated tarantula thick filament. We used heavy and light chain sequences from tarantula myosin to build a single-species homology model of two heavy meromyosin interacting-heads motifs (IHMs). The flexibly fitted model includes previously missing loops and shows five intramolecular and five intermolecular interactions that keep the IHM in a compact off structure, forming four helical tracks of IHMs around the backbone. The residues involved in these interactions are oppositely charged, and their sequence conservation suggests that IHM is present across animal species. The new model, PDB 3JBH, explains the structural origin of the ATP turnover rates detected in relaxed tarantula muscle by ascribing the very slow rate to docked unphosphorylated heads, the slow rate to phosphorylated docked heads, and the fast rate to phosphorylated undocked heads. The conservation of intramolecular interactions across animal species and the presence of IHM in bilaterians suggest that a super-relaxed state should be maintained, as it plays a role in saving ATP in skeletal, cardiac, and smooth muscles.

X-ray solution scattering of squid heavy meromyosin: strengthening the evidence for an ancient compact off state

The overall conformations of regulated myosins or heavy meromyosins from chicken/turkey, scallop, tarantula, limulus, and scorpion sources have been studied by a number of techniques, including electron microscopy, sedimentation, and pulsed electron paramagnetic resonance. These studies have indicated that the binding of regulatory ions changes the conformation of the molecule from a compact shape found in the "off" state of the muscle to extended relationships between the tail and independently mobile heads that predominate in the "on" state. Here we strengthen the argument for the generality of this conformational change by using small angle X-ray scattering on heavy meromyosin from squid. Small angle X-ray scattering allows the protein to be visualized in solution under mild and relatively physiological conditions, and squid differs from the other species studied by at least 500 million years of evolution. Analysis of the data indicates that upon addition of Ca(2+) the radius of gyration increases. Differences in the squid "on" and "off" states are clearly distinguishable as bimodal and unimodal pair distance distribution functions respectively. These observations are consistent with a Ca(2+)-free squid heavy meromyosin that is compact, but which becomes extended when Ca(2+) is bound. Further, the scattering profile derived from the current model of tarantula heavy meromyosin in the "off" state is in excellent agreement with the measured "off" state scattering profile for squid heavy meromyosin. The previous and current studies together provide significant evidence that regulated myosin's compact off-state conformation is an ancient trait, inherited from a common ancestor during divergent evolution.