Muscles must be able to relax as well as contract. Contraction and relaxation are regulated by molecular switches on the thick (myosin-containing) and thin (actin-containing) filaments, which together make up the contractile machinery. Defects in regulation can lead to muscle disease. Our long term goal is to understand the structural basis of muscle regulation;our focus in this application is the relaxed state. During the current grant period we achieved two key breakthroughs in defining the molecular structure and regulatory mechanism of myosin filaments, resolving basic questions dating back more than 40 years. We also gained new insights into troponin-tropomyosin regulation of actin filaments. Our insights raise key new mechanistic questions, which we propose to investigate in this renewal. To understand how muscles relax, the structures of the actin and myosin filaments in the relaxed state must be determined. To achieve this, state-of-the-art electron microscopic and 3D image reconstruction techniques will be applied to native filaments and their isolated component molecules. Using these approaches: (1) The molecular interactions underlying the relaxed state of striated and smooth muscle myosin filaments will be defined in detail. (2) The specific amino acid residues and protein domains essential to these relaxed-state interactions will be determined by analyzing the effects of targeted mutations on the structure of expressed single myosin molecules. (3) The structural basis of thin filament relaxation will be defined by analyzing the native, relaxed-state organization of the regulatory components troponin and tropomyosin, and the thin filament template protein, nebulin. In each study, reconstructions will be fitted to atomic resolution crystal structures of thick and thin filament subunits, defining molecular contacts at near-atomic resolution. Our studies of myosin molecules and filaments will provide new insights into general mechanisms of thick filament regulation, and especially into the nature of the relaxed state in vertebrate striated muscle. Further advances in our studies of troponin-tropomyosin regulated thin filaments will provide new information on native thin filament structure, the 3D organization of troponin and tropomyosin, and the structural contribution of nebulin to the relaxed state. Preliminary data demonstrate the feasibility of our aims. The new insights arising from these proposals will provide a deeper understanding of the structural basis of muscle relaxation. Defining molecular mechanisms in healthy muscle is essential to understanding structural defects that underlie muscle disorders.

Public Health Relevance

Muscles must be able to relax as well as contract. Defects in relaxation lead to diseases such as hypertension and cardiomyopathy. Insights into the molecular basis of relaxation that emerge from our work will lay the foundation for understanding the cause of such diseases, and also how muscles are activated.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01AR034711-22
Application #
8501375
Study Section
Skeletal Muscle and Exercise Physiology Study Section (SMEP)
Program Officer
Boyce, Amanda T
Project Start
1984-12-01
Project End
2014-06-30
Budget Start
2013-07-01
Budget End
2014-06-30
Support Year
22
Fiscal Year
2013
Total Cost
$334,178
Indirect Cost
$131,030
Name
University of Massachusetts Medical School Worcester
Department
Anatomy/Cell Biology
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
603847393
City
Worcester
State
MA
Country
United States
Zip Code
01655
Lee, Kyoung Hwan; Sulbarán, Guidenn; Yang, Shixin et al. (2018) Interacting-heads motif has been conserved as a mechanism of myosin II inhibition since before the origin of animals. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 115:E1991-E2000
Mun, Ji Young; Kensler, Robert W; Harris, Samantha P et al. (2016) The cMyBP-C HCM variant L348P enhances thin filament activation through an increased shift in tropomyosin position. J Mol Cell Cardiol 91:141-7
Previs, Michael J; Mun, Ji Young; Michalek, Arthur J et al. (2016) Phosphorylation and calcium antagonistically tune myosin-binding protein C's structure and function. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 113:3239-44
Yang, Shixin; Woodhead, John L; Zhao, Fa-Qing et al. (2016) An approach to improve the resolution of helical filaments with a large axial rise and flexible subunits. J Struct Biol 193:45-54
Previs, Michael J; Prosser, Benjamin L; Mun, Ji Young et al. (2015) Myosin-binding protein C corrects an intrinsic inhomogeneity in cardiac excitation-contraction coupling. Sci Adv 1:
Sulbarán, Guidenn; Alamo, Lorenzo; Pinto, Antonio et al. (2015) An invertebrate smooth muscle with striated muscle myosin filaments. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 112:E5660-8
Lee, Kyounghwan; Harris, Samantha P; Sadayappan, Sakthivel et al. (2015) Orientation of myosin binding protein C in the cardiac muscle sarcomere determined by domain-specific immuno-EM. J Mol Biol 427:274-86
Kirk, Jonathan A; Chakir, Khalid; Lee, Kyoung Hwan et al. (2015) Pacemaker-induced transient asynchrony suppresses heart failure progression. Sci Transl Med 7:319ra207
Mun, Ji Young; Previs, Michael J; Yu, Hope Y et al. (2014) Myosin-binding protein C displaces tropomyosin to activate cardiac thin filaments and governs their speed by an independent mechanism. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 111:2170-5
Craig, Roger; Lee, Kyoung Hwan; Mun, Ji Young et al. (2014) Structure, sarcomeric organization, and thin filament binding of cardiac myosin-binding protein-C. Pflugers Arch 466:425-31

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