The incorporation of radioactive lysine or tyrosine into cardiac and skeletal myofibrillar and non-myofibrillar contractile proteins.

The labelled amino acids incorporation into cardiac and skeletal contractile proteins has been compared after a single injection of 3H lysine, repeated injections of 3H lysine during 1 or 6 hours or after a continuous infusion of both 3H-lysine and 14C-tyrosine. The myofibrillar incorporation was higher in the heart than in the skeletal muscle. Myosin heavy chains and actin have been prepared using gel filtration. The incorporation was again higher in the heart for both these proteins but the labelling of actin in both the muscles reaches rapidly a plateau in contrast with myosin, suggesting that these two proteins possess a different precursor pool. Myosin heavy chains prepared from the supernatant obtained after a relaxing treatment were more labelled than those extracted from myofibrils. These heavy chains from the supernatant were presumably newly synthetized and not yet incorporated into myofibrils. They also were more labelled in the heart than in the skeletal muscle which means that the myosin synthesis itself was different and not the process of assembly of the myofibrils.