Structural highlights
Function
[TPM1_CHICK] Binds to actin filaments in muscle and non-muscle cells. Plays a central role, in association with the troponin complex, in the calcium dependent regulation of vertebrate striated muscle contraction. Smooth muscle contraction is regulated by interaction with caldesmon. In non-muscle cells is implicated in stabilizing cytoskeleton actin filaments.
Evolutionary Conservation
Check, as determined by ConSurfDB. You may read the explanation of the method and the full data available from ConSurf.
Publication Abstract from PubMed
The crystal structure at 2.0-A resolution of an 81-residue N-terminal fragment of muscle alpha-tropomyosin reveals a parallel two-stranded alpha-helical coiled-coil structure with a remarkable core. The high alanine content of the molecule is clustered into short regions where the local 2-fold symmetry is broken by a small (approximately 1.2-A) axial staggering of the helices. The joining of these regions with neighboring segments, where the helices are in axial register, gives rise to specific bends in the molecular axis. We observe such bends to be widely distributed in two-stranded alpha-helical coiled-coil proteins. This asymmetric design in a dimer of identical (or highly similar) sequences allows the tropomyosin molecule to adopt multiple bent conformations. The seven alanine clusters in the core of the complete molecule (which spans seven monomers of the actin helix) promote the semiflexible winding of the tropomyosin filament necessary for its regulatory role in muscle contraction.
Deciphering the design of the tropomyosin molecule.,Brown JH, Kim KH, Jun G, Greenfield NJ, Dominguez R, Volkmann N, Hitchcock-DeGregori SE, Cohen C Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001 Jul 17;98(15):8496-501. Epub 2001 Jul 3. PMID:11438684[1]
From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
See Also
References
- ↑ Brown JH, Kim KH, Jun G, Greenfield NJ, Dominguez R, Volkmann N, Hitchcock-DeGregori SE, Cohen C. Deciphering the design of the tropomyosin molecule. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001 Jul 17;98(15):8496-501. Epub 2001 Jul 3. PMID:11438684 doi:10.1073/pnas.131219198
