Solubility-determining domain of smooth muscle myosin rod.

Chymotryptic digestion of chicken gizzard light meromyosin (LMM) produced a 72 kDa core fragment, which was fully soluble at 150 mM KCl, pH 6.5-7.5. The fragment showed weak self-association at 50 mM KCl. The homology of the N-terminus amino acid sequence of this fragment with the sequence of the rabbit skeletal myosin rod suggested that the N-terminus of the core fragment originated 5 kDa from the hinge common to both smooth and skeletal myosin rod. Sedimentation experiments indicated that the domain specifying the insolubility of the intact LMM was 13 kDa long. Progressive proteolytic shortening of this region produced LMM fragments of progressively increasing solubility. Electron microscopy of segments formed from full-length LMM and from LMM core suggested that this 13 kDa domain specified the 43 nm parallel and antiparallel molecular overlaps characteristic of self-assembled intact myosin.