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This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 287/4/H1484    most recent 01112.2003v1 Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in ISI Web of Science Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Jagatheesan, G. Articles by Wieczorek, D. F. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Jagatheesan, G. Articles by Wieczorek, D. F.

Physiological significance of troponin T binding domains in striated muscle tropomyosin

¹Department of Molecular Genetics, Biochemistry, and Microbiology, ²Institute of Molecular Pharmacology and Biophysics, Department of Surgery, and ³Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, Ohio 45267; and ⁴Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Illinois, Chicago College of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois 60612

Submitted 24 November 2003 ; accepted in final form 3 June 2004

Striated muscle tropomyosin (TM) plays an essential role in sarcomeric contraction and relaxation through its regulated movement on the thin filament. Previous work in our laboratory established that - and -TM isoforms elicit physiological differences in sarcomeric performance. To address the significance of isoform-specific troponin T binding regions in TM, in this present work we replaced -TM amino acids 175–190 and 258–284 with the -TM regions and expressed this chimeric protein in the hearts of transgenic mice. Hearts that express this chimeric protein exhibit significant decreases in rates of contraction and relaxation when assessed by ex vivo work-performing cardiac analyses. There are increases in time to peak pressure and in half-time to relaxation. These hearts respond appropriately to -adrenergic stimulation but do not attain control rates of contraction or relaxation. With increased expression of the transgene, 70% of the mice die by 5 mo of age without exhibiting gross pathological changes in the heart. Myofilaments from these mice have no differences in Ca²⁺ sensitivity of percent maximum force, but there is a decrease in maximum tension development. Our data are the first to demonstrate that the troponin T binding regions of specific TM isoforms can alter sarcomeric performance without changing the Ca²⁺ sensitivity of the myofilaments.

cardiac muscle; thin filament regulation; heart