Structural and functional characterization of calponin fragments.

Calponin from chicken gizzard consists of two principal components, possibly isoforms, separable by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and isoelectric focusing. Cleavage with 2-nitro-5-thiocyanobenzoic acid indicated that calponin contains 2 cysteine residues. Purified fragments of 30 and 21 kDa retained the following properties of the intact protein: actin-, tropomyosin- and calmodulin-binding, and ability to inhibit the actin-activated MgATPase activity of smooth muscle myosin. Both fragments, like intact calponin, were phosphorylated by protein kinase C which inhibited their binding to actin and relieved their inhibition of the ATPase. Tryptic digestion of calponin phosphorylated by protein kinase C generated 3 phosphopeptides with the following N-terminal sequences: FASQQGMTAYGTR, GASQQGMTVYGLP, and NHSGHVQ, each possessing a single phosphoserine.