John Trinick

The Z-disk is a complex structure comprising some 40 proteins that are involved in the transmission of force developed during muscle contraction and in important signalling pathways that govern muscle homeostasis. In the Z-disk the ends of antiparallel thin filaments from adjacent sarcomeres are crosslinked by α-actinin. The structure of the Z-disk lattice varies greatly throughout the animal kingdom. In vertebrates the thin filaments form a tetragonal lattice, whereas invertebrate flight muscle has a hexagonal lattice. The width of the Z-disk varies considerably and correlates with the number of α-actinin bridges. A detailed description at a high resolution of the Z-disk lattice is needed in order to better understand muscle function and disease. The molecular architecture of the Z-disk lattice in honeybee (Apis mellifera) is known from plastic embedded thin sections to a resolution of 7 nm, which is not sufficient to dock component protein crystal structures. It has been shown that sectioning is a damaging process that leads to the loss of finer details present in biological specimens. However, the Apis Z-disk is a thin structure (120 nm) suitable for cryo EM. We have isolated intact honeybee Z-disks from indirect flight muscle, thus obviating the need of plastic sectioning. We have employed cryo electron tomography and image processing to investigate the arrangement of proteins within the hexagonal lattice of the Apis Z-disk. The resolution obtained, ~6 nm, was probably limited by damage caused by the harshness of the conditions used to extract the myofibrils and isolate the Z-disks.

In this review we discuss the history and the current state of ideas related to the mechanism of size regulation of the thick (myosin) and thin (actin) filaments in vertebrate striated muscles. Various hypotheses have been considered during of more than half century of research, recently mostly involving titin and nebulin acting as templates or ‘molecular rulers’, terminating exact assembly. These two giant, single-polypeptide, filamentous proteins are bound in situ along the thick and thin filaments, respectively, with an almost perfect match in the respective lengths and structural periodicities. However, evidence still questions the possibility that the proteins function as templates, or scaffolds, on which the thin and thick filaments could be assembled. In addition, the progress in muscle research during the last decades highlighted a number of other factors that could potentially be involved in the mechanism of length regulation: molecular chaperones that may guide folding and assembly of actin and myosin; capping proteins that can influence the rates of assembly-disassembly of the myofilaments; Ca²⁺ transients that can activate or deactivate protein interactions, etc. The entire mechanism of sarcomere assembly appears complex and highly dynamic. This mechanism is also capable of producing filaments of about the correct size without titin and nebulin. What then is the role of these proteins? Evidence points to titin and nebulin stabilizing structures of the respective filaments. This stabilizing effect, based on linear proteins of a fixed size, implies that titin and nebulin are indeed molecular rulers of the filaments. Although the proteins may not function as templates in the assembly of the filaments, they measure and stabilize exactly the same size of the functionally important for the muscles segments in each of the respective filaments.

The giant protein titin is the third most abundant protein of vertebrate striated muscle. The titin molecule is >1 μm long and spans half the sarcomere, from the Z-disk to the M-line, and has important roles in sarcomere assembly, elasticity and intracellular signaling. In the A-band of the sarcomere titin is attached to the thick filaments and mainly consists immunoglobulin-like and fibronectin type III-like domains. These are mostly arranged in long-range patterns or ‘super-repeats’. The large super-repeats each contain 11 domains and are repeated 11 times, thus forming nearly half the titin molecule. Through interactions with myosin and C-protein, they are involved in thick filament assembly. The importance of titin in muscle assembly is highlighted by the effect of mutations in the A-band portion, which are the commonest cause of dilated cardiomyopathy, affecting ~1 in 250 (Herman et al. in N Engl J Med 366:619–628, 2012). Here we report backbone ¹⁵N, ¹³C and ¹H chemical shift and ¹³Cβ assignments for the A59–A60 domain tandem from the titin A59–A69 large super-repeat, completed using triple resonance NMR. Since, some regions of the backbone remained unassigned in A60 domain of the complete A59–A60 tandem, a construct containing a single A60 domain, A60sd, was also studied using the same methods. Considerably improved assignment coverage was achieved using A60sd due to its lower mass and improved molecular tumbling rate; these assignments also allowed the analysis of inter-domain interactions using chemical shift mapping against A59–A60.

Skeletal and cardiac muscles are remarkable biological machines that support and move our bodies and power the rhythmic work of our lungs and hearts. As well as producing active contractile force, muscles are also passively elastic, which is essential to their performance. The origins of both active contractile and passive elastic forces can be traced to the individual proteins that make up the highly ordered structure of muscle. In this Primer, we describe the organization of sarcomeres—the structural units that produce contraction—and the nature of the proteins that make muscle elastic. In particular, we focus on an elastic protein called myomesin, whose novel modular architecture helps explain elasticity.

Single molecules of the giant protein titin extend across half of the muscle sarcomere, from the Z-line to the M-line, and have roles in muscle assembly and elasticity. In the A-band titin is attached to thick filaments and here the domain arrangement occurs in regular patterns of eleven called the large super-repeat. The large super-repeat itself occurs eleven times and forms nearly half the titin molecule. Interactions of the large super-repeats with myosin are consistent with a role in thick filament assembly. Here we report backbone assignments of the titin A67-A68 domain tandem (Fn-Ig) from the third super-repeat (A65-A75) completed using triple resonance NMR experiments.

Using electron microscopy and image processing, we have observed myosin 5a modified with lever arms of different lengths (four, six, and eight calmodulin-binding IQ domains) and orientations walking along actin filaments. Step lengths were dependent on lever length: 8IQ > 6IQ > 4IQ, which is consistent with myosin 5a having evolved to walk straight along actin. Lead heads were mostly in the prepowerstroke state, tethered there by the trail head. However, improved image processing showed that in 5–10% of molecules the lead motor was in the postpowerstroke state. This is a unique attached state of myosin, where the motor domain has completed its powerstroke at the expense of severe lever distortion, but with little cargo movement. Postpowerstroke lead heads were seen in both wild-type and modified lever molecules, mostly where there was least strain. These data allow the strain dependence of the equilibrium between pre- and postpowerstroke conformations to be measured. Slow rates of ADP dissociation observed from lead heads of these molecules can be explained by the unfavorable equilibrium between the pre- and postpowerstroke conformations preceding ADP loss.

The giant protein titin is thought to play major roles in the assembly and function of muscle sarcomeres. Structural details, such as widths of Z- and M-lines and periodicities in the thick filaments, correlate with the substructure in the respective regions of the titin molecule. Sarcomere rest length, its operating range of lengths, and passive elastic properties are also directly controlled by the properties of titin. Here we review some recent titin data and discuss its implications for sarcomere architecture and elasticity.