• Structural basis of the relaxed state of a Ca2+-regulated myosin filament and its evolutionary implications

      Woodhead, John L.; Zhao, Fa-Qing; Craig, Roger (2013-05-21)
      Myosin filaments of muscle are regulated either by phosphorylation of their regulatory light chains or Ca(2+) binding to the essential light chains, contributing to on-off switching or modulation of contraction. Phosphorylation-regulated filaments in the relaxed state are characterized by an asymmetric interaction between the two myosin heads, inhibiting their actin binding or ATPase activity. Here, we have tested whether a similar interaction switches off activity in myosin filaments regulated by Ca(2+) binding. Cryo-electron microscopy and single-particle image reconstruction of Ca(2+)-regulated (scallop) filaments reveals a helical array of myosin head-pair motifs above the filament surface. Docking of atomic models of scallop myosin head domains into the motifs reveals that the heads interact in a similar way to those in phosphorylation-regulated filaments. The results imply that the two major evolutionary branches of myosin regulation--involving phosphorylation or Ca(2+) binding--share a common structural mechanism for switching off thick-filament activity in relaxed muscle. We suggest that the Ca(2+)-binding mechanism evolved from the more ancient phosphorylation-based system to enable rapid response of myosin-regulated muscles to activation. Although the motifs are similar in both systems, the scallop structure is more tilted and higher above the filament backbone, leading to different intermolecular interactions. The reconstruction reveals how the myosin tail emerges from the motif, connecting the heads to the filament backbone, and shows that the backbone is built from supramolecular assemblies of myosin tails. The reconstruction provides a native structural context for understanding past biochemical and biophysical studies of this model Ca(2+)-regulated myosin.
    • Updates to the Integrated Protein-Protein Interaction Benchmarks: Docking Benchmark Version 5 and Affinity Benchmark Version 2

      Vreven, Thom; Moal, Iain H.; Vangone, Anna; Pierce, Brian G.; Kastritis, Panagiotis L.; Torchala, Mieczyslaw; Chaleil, Raphael; Jimenez-Garcia, Brian; Bates, Paul A.; Fernandez-Recio, Juan; et al. (2015-09-25)
      We present an updated and integrated version of our widely used protein-protein docking and binding affinity benchmarks. The benchmarks consist of non-redundant, high-quality structures of protein-protein complexes along with the unbound structures of their components. Fifty-five new complexes were added to the docking benchmark, 35 of which have experimentally measured binding affinities. These updated docking and affinity benchmarks now contain 230 and 179 entries, respectively. In particular, the number of antibody-antigen complexes has increased significantly, by 67% and 74% in the docking and affinity benchmarks, respectively. We tested previously developed docking and affinity prediction algorithms on the new cases. Considering only the top 10 docking predictions per benchmark case, a prediction accuracy of 38% is achieved on all 55 cases and up to 50% for the 32 rigid-body cases only. Predicted affinity scores are found to correlate with experimental binding energies up to r=0.52 overall and r=0.72 for the rigid complexes.