What is it about?
All striated muscles contain filaments composed of the molecular motor myosin II. Thick filaments enable large populations of myosin II motors to act collectively and therefore scale to enable organisms as small as nematodes or as large as whales to move. The myosin molecule is uniquely suited for this ability to scale because it has a domain, the myosin head, which functions as a molecular motor. Another domain, the tail, facilitates polymerization into bipolar filaments. How myosin filaments organize into thick filaments was largely a mystery until the structure of this thick filament was solved.
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Why is it important?
There are numerous disease of striated muscle in humans. Particularly serious are those that arise from mutations in cardiac muscle myosin. About half of these myosin mutations occur in the myosin head with the other half occurring in the tail. This structure is the first step toward understanding how these mutations in the tail can affect thick filament function.
Perspectives
It is quite fascinating to work on muscle and see the similarities as well as subtle differences between its structure among different species. I learned most of what I know about the field of biophysics through the process of working on this project and writing the final manuscript was an amazing experience.
Hamidreza Rahmani
Florida State University
I have been working on the structural biology of muscle for four decades using this insect, the large water bug Lethocerus, as the model system. It has possibility the best ordered muscle in nature which makes identifying patterns in the protein arrangement comparatively easy. The resolution revolution has now opened the possibility of identifying these patterns at atomic resolution. It is remarkable that electron microscopy of this muscle provided the most detailed images of striated muscle starting in the 1960s and now has provided insight into the atomic structure of one of the most elusive components of muscle, the myosin molecule. The structure provided many more surprises than expected.
Professor Kenneth A. Taylor
Florida State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The myosin II coiled-coil domain atomic structure in its native environment, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 2021, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2024151118.
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