Innocuous labeling of the subfragment-2 region of skeletal muscle heavy meromyosin with a fluorescent polyacrylamide nanobead and visualization of individual heavy meromyosin molecules.

We have studied transglutaminase-catalyzed incorporation of monodansylcadaverine and monobiotincadaverine into rabbit skeletal muscle heavy meromyosin (HMM). The incorporation of dansylcadaverine reached saturation at 4 mol per 1 mol of HMM. An electrophoretogram of the chymotryptic digest of the dansyl-labeled HMM revealed that the labeling took place primarily in the S-2 region of HMM. Atomic force microscopic images and electron micrographs of the complexes of the biotinylated HMM and UltraAvidin-coated fluorescent polyacrylamide nanoparticles revealed that the biotinylated site on S-2 was very close to the C-terminus (near the S-2/light meromyosin junction). In keeping with this result, together with HMM's key sites being localized on the S-1 region, the enzymatic conjugation of biotincadaverine had no influence upon the actin-activated ATPase activity of HMM or upon the ability of HMM to actuate sliding of actin filaments in in vitro motility assay. Attachment of an UltraAvidin-coated fluorescent nanobead to the biotinylated HMM also did not alter the motile activity of HMM. Thus, we can optically pinpoint individual HMM molecules in a sample, which will facilitate handling and manipulation of single HMM molecules and observation of their functional behavior.