Rusu, M, Hu, Z, Taylor, KA et al. (1 more author) (2017) Structure of isolated Z-disks from honeybee flight muscle. Journal of Muscle Research and Cell Motility, 38 (2). April. pp. 241-250. ISSN 0142-4319
Abstract
The Z-disk is a complex structure comprising some 40 proteins that are involved in the transmission of force developed during muscle contraction and in important signalling pathways that govern muscle homeostasis. In the Z-disk the ends of antiparallel thin filaments from adjacent sarcomeres are crosslinked by α-actinin. The structure of the Z-disk lattice varies greatly throughout the animal kingdom. In vertebrates the thin filaments form a tetragonal lattice, whereas invertebrate flight muscle has a hexagonal lattice. The width of the Z-disk varies considerably and correlates with the number of α-actinin bridges. A detailed description at a high resolution of the Z-disk lattice is needed in order to better understand muscle function and disease. The molecular architecture of the Z-disk lattice in honeybee (Apis mellifera) is known from plastic embedded thin sections to a resolution of 7 nm, which is not sufficient to dock component protein crystal structures. It has been shown that sectioning is a damaging process that leads to the loss of finer details present in biological specimens. However, the Apis Z-disk is a thin structure (120 nm) suitable for cryo EM. We have isolated intact honeybee Z-disks from indirect flight muscle, thus obviating the need of plastic sectioning. We have employed cryo electron tomography and image processing to investigate the arrangement of proteins within the hexagonal lattice of the Apis Z-disk. The resolution obtained, ~6 nm, was probably limited by damage caused by the harshness of the conditions used to extract the myofibrils and isolate the Z-disks.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
Keywords: | Cryo electron tomography; Subtomogram averaging; Z-disk; Indirect flight muscle; α-actinin |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Molecular and Cellular Biology (Leeds) > Animal Cell Biology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 08 Aug 2017 11:28 |
Last Modified: | 11 Jan 2018 09:21 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Verlag |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10974-017-9477-5 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:119867 |