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Flexibility of smooth and skletal tropomyosins
Author(s) -
Swenson Charles A.,
Stellwagen Nancy C.
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
biopolymers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.556
H-Index - 125
eISSN - 1097-0282
pISSN - 0006-3525
DOI - 10.1002/bip.360280504
Subject(s) - tropomyosin , persistence length , chemistry , skeletal muscle , coiled coil , flexibility (engineering) , biophysics , crystallography , tenacity (mineralogy) , anatomy , actin , molecule , biochemistry , biology , mineralogy , mathematics , statistics , organic chemistry
The rotational relaxation times of nonpolymerizable skeletal and smooth muscle tropomyosin were measured by analysis of the decay of the zero‐field birefringence at different temperatures and salt concentrations. Skeletal tropomyosin in solution is equally well modeled as a rigid rod or as a semiflexible rod with a persistence length of 150 nm. Smooth muscle tropomyosin does not fit the rigid rod model but is well approximated by a semiflexible rod model with a persistence length of 55 nm. The results indicate that smooth muscle tropomyosin is either a more flexible molecule than skeletal muscle tropomyosin or is a curved structure with an end‐to‐end length shorter than the coiled‐coil contour length. Smooth muscle tropomyosin controls the actomyosin ATPase differently from skeletal muscle tropomyosin and it had been suggested that the reason is because it is more rigid; clearly, another explanation must be sought.