Amino acid composition of dynein and comparison with myosin.

A comparison is made between dynein [flagellar ATPase; EC 3.6.1.3], purified from sea urchin sperm flagella, and muscle myosin. The amino acid composition of dynein was found to be statistically different from that of myosin. The same was true of their tryptic fragments retaining ATPase activity, i.e., Fragment A of dynein and heavy meromyosin. At low ionic strength, no superprecipitation took place when ATP was added to a mixture of dynein and actin, and stimulation of the Mg2+-ATPase activity of dynein remained below 50% even when a one-hundred-fold excess of actin was present. No viscosity drop was caused by adding ATP to a solution containing dynein and actin. Anti-myosin antiserum did not react with dynein, while anti-Fragment A antiserum formed no precipit-n line against myosin. Furthermore, the amount of dynein that combined with F-actin was less than one-fifth of the amount of dynein that fully combined with microtubules. These results are consistent with the dissimilarity in enzymatic and other physiocochemical properties of these two proteins.