Journal
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY
Volume 212, Issue 5, Pages 668-672Publisher
COMPANY OF BIOLOGISTS LTD
DOI: 10.1242/jeb.022681
Keywords
alpha-actinin; actin; chordate; connectin; muscle
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Funding
- Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan
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Identification of a large molecule in muscle is important but difficult to approach by protein chemistry. In this study we isolated nebulin cDNA from the striated muscle of amphioxus, and characterized the C-terminal regions of nebulins from other chordates. Although the sequence homology with that of human is only 26%, the C-terminal region of amphioxus nebulin has similar structural motifs of 35 amino acid nebulin repeats and an SH3 domain. Using in situ indirect immunofluorescence analysis with a specific antibody raised to the bacterially produced recombinant peptide, we identified that this nebulin fragment is located in the Z-line of the sarcomere, similar to human nebulin. Pull-down and co-sedimentation assays in vitro showed that the C-terminal region binds to actin, alpha-actinin and connectin (titin). These results suggest that the C-terminal region of amphioxus nebulin plays a similar role in maintaining striated muscle structure to that of human nebulin. This is the first report of the exact location of nebulin in amphioxus muscle.
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