Polypeptide subunits of dynein 1 from sea urchin sperm flagella.

A high-resolution sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis system has been used to show the presence, in both whole sperm and isolated flagellar axonemes, of eight polypeptides migrating in the 300,000--350,000 molecular weight range characteristic of the heavy chains of dynein ATPase. Previously, only five such chains have been discernible. Extraction of isolated axonemes for 10 min at 4 degrees C with a solution containing 0.6 M NaCl, ph 7, releases a mixture of particles that separate, in sucrose density gradient centrifugation, into a major peak, dynein 1 ATPase, sedimenting at 21S and a minor peak at 12--14S. The polypeptide compositions of these two peaks are different. The dynein 1 peak, which contains most of the protein on the gradient, contains approximately equal quantities of two closely migrating heavy chains, with a small amount of a third, more slowly migrating chain; no other heavy chains appear in this peak. Two groups of smaller polypeptides (three intermediate chains, within the apparent molecular weight range 76,000--122,000 and four newly discovered light chains, within the apparent molecular weight range 14,000--24,000) cosediment with the 21S peak. The heavy chain composition of the 12--14S peak is more complex, all eight heavy chains occurring approximately the same ratios as occur in intact axonemes.