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Mg2+ ions bind at the C-terminal region of skeletal muscle α-tropomyosin

✍ Scribed by Fernando Corrêa; Chuck S. Farah; Roberto K. Salinas


Publisher
Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
Year
2009
Tongue
English
Weight
324 KB
Volume
91
Category
Article
ISSN
0006-3525

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✦ Synopsis


Abstract

Tropomyosin (Tm) is a dimeric coiled‐coil protein that polymerizes through head‐to‐tail interactions. These polymers bind along actin filaments and play an important role in the regulation of muscle contraction. Analysis of its primary structure shows that Tm is rich in acidic residues, which are clustered along the molecule and may form sites for divalent cation binding. In a previous study, we showed that the Mg^2+^‐induced increase in stability of the C‐terminal half of Tm is sensitive to mutations near the C‐terminus. In the present report, we study the interaction between Mg^2+^ and full‐length Tm and smaller fragments corresponding to the last 65 and 26 Tm residues. Although the smaller Tm peptide (Tm~259‐284(W269)~) is flexible and to large extent unstructured, the larger Tm~220‐284(W269)~ fragment forms a coiled coil in solution whose stability increases significantly in the presence of Mg^2+^. NMR analysis shows that Mg^2+^ induces chemical shift perturbations in both Tm~220‐284(W269)~ and Tm~259‐284(W269)~ in the vicinity of His276, in which are located several negatively charged residues. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Biopolymers 91: 583–590, 2009.

This article was originally published online as an accepted preprint. The “Published Online” date corresponds to the preprint version. You can request a copy of the preprint by emailing the Biopolymers editorial office at [email protected]