An unusual transduction pathway in human tonic smooth muscle myosin

Human Tonic and Phasic Smooth Muscle Myosin Isoforms Are Unresponsive to the Loop 1 Insert

Smooth muscle myosin gene products include two isoforms, SMA and SMB, differing by a 7-residue peptide in loop 1 (i7) at the myosin active site where ATP is hydrolyzed. Using chicken isoforms, previous work indicated that the i7 deletion in SMA prolongs strong actin binding by inhibiting active site ingress and egress of nucleotide when compared to i7 inserted SMB. Additionally, i7 deletion inhibits Pi release associated with the switch 2 closed → open transition in actin-activated ATPase. Switch 2 is far from loop 1 indicating i7 deletion has an allosteric effect on Pi release. Chicken SMA and SMB have unknown and robust nucleotide-sensitive tryptophan (NST) fluorescence increments, respectively. Human SMA and SMB both lack NST increments while Pi release in Ca²⁺ ATPase is not impacted by i7 deletion. The NST reports relay helix movement following conformation change in switch 2 but in the open → closed transition. The NST is common to all known myosin isoforms except human smooth muscle. Other independent works on human SMA and SMB motility indicate no functional effect of i7 deletion. Smooth muscle myosin is a stunning example of species-specific myosin structure/function divergence underscoring the danger in extrapolating disease-linked mutant effects on myosin across species.

Myosin individualized: single nucleotide polymorphisms in energy transduction

BACKGROUND

Myosin performs ATP free energy transduction into mechanical work in the motor domain of the myosin heavy chain (MHC). Energy transduction is the definitive systemic feature of the myosin motor performed by coordinating in a time ordered sequence: ATP hydrolysis at the active site, actin affinity modulation at the actin binding site, and the lever-arm rotation of the power stroke. These functions are carried out by several conserved sub-domains within the motor domain. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) affect the MHC sequence of many isoforms expressed in striated muscle, smooth muscle, and non-muscle tissue. The purpose of this work is to provide a rationale for using SNPs as a functional genomics tool to investigate structurefunction relationships in myosin. In particular, to discover SNP distribution over the conserved sub-domains and surmise what it implies about sub-domain stability and criticality in the energy transduction mechanism.

RESULTS

An automated routine identifying human nonsynonymous SNP amino acid missense substitutions for any MHC gene mined the NCBI SNP data base. The routine tested 22 MHC genes coding muscle and non-muscle isoforms and identified 89 missense mutation positions in the motor domain with 10 already implicated in heart disease and another 8 lacking sequence homology with a skeletal MHC isoform for which a crystallographic model is available. The remaining 71 SNP substitutions were found to be distributed over MHC with 22 falling outside identified functional sub-domains and 49 in or very near to myosin sub-domains assigned specific crucial functions in energy transduction. The latter includes the active site, the actin binding site, the rigid lever-arm, and regions facilitating their communication. Most MHC isoforms contained SNPs somewhere in the motor domain.

CONCLUSIONS

Several functional-crucial sub-domains are infiltrated by a large number of SNP substitution sites suggesting these domains are engineered by evolution to be too-robust to be disturbed by otherwise intrusive sequence changes. Two functional sub-domains are SNP-free or relatively SNP-deficient but contain many disease implicated mutants. These sub-domains are apparently highly sensitive to any missense substitution suggesting they have failed to evolve a robust sequence paradigm for performing their function.

Myosin dynamics on the millisecond time scale

Myosin is a motor protein associating with actin and ATP. It translates along actin filaments against a force by transduction of free energy liberated with ATP hydrolysis. Various myosin crystal structures define time points during ATPase showing the protein undergoes large conformation change during transduction over a cycle with approximately 10 ms periodicity. The protein conformation trajectory between two intermediates in the cycle is surmised by non-equilibrium Monte Carlo simulation utilizing free-energy minimization. The trajectory shows myosin transduction of free energy to mechanical work giving evidence for: (i) a causal relationship between product release and work production in the native isoform that is correctly disrupted in a chemically modified protein, (ii) the molecular basis of ATP-sensitive tryptophan fluorescence enhancement and acrylamide quenching, (iii) an actin-binding site peptide containing the free-energy barrier to ATPase product release defining the rate limiting step and, (iv) a scenario for actin-activation of myosin ATPase.