Interaction between vertebrate skeletal and uterine muscle myosins and light meromyosins.

The specific contributions of this work may be summarized as follows: (a) No hybridization of uterine and skeletal myosin occurs at pH 6.0 although previous studies have shown that hybridization does occur at pH 6.5 (B. Kaminer et al. 1976. J. Mol. Biol. 100:379-386) or 7.0 (T. Pollard. 1975. J. Cell Biol. 67:93-104) (b) Hybridization of uterine and skeletal light meromyosins (LMM) occurs at pH 7.0 but not at pH 6.0, which is analogous to the hybridization of myosins. (c) In hybridized paracrystals there is a uniform distribution of both uterine and skeletal LMM molecules because all the paracrystals have only one axial repeat pattern. This makes it highly likely that in hybridized filaments the two myosins are also uniformly distributed throughout the filaments. (d) The 14-nm repeat of white bands observed in paracrystals of uterine LMM formed at pH 6.0, compared with the 14-nm repeat of dark bands observed with skeletal LMM under the same conditions, probably reflects differences in surface charge density along the different LMM molecules.