Dimerization specificity of adult and neonatal chicken skeletal muscle myosin heavy chain rods

The dimerization specificity of the recombinantly expressed and purified rod domain of adult and neonatal chicken myosin heavy chain was analyzed using metal chelation chromatography. Our results indicate that full-length adult and neonatal rods preferentially formed homodimers when renatured from an equimolar mixture of the two isoforms denatured in guanidine hydrochloride. The contribution made toward the dimerization specificity by subdomains of the rod has been addressed by making a chimeric protein consisting of the subfragment 2 (S2) region of the adult isoform and the light meromyosin region of the neonatal isoform. The proportion of heterodimers formed in exchange experiments between the chimera and the neonatal and adult rods rose with increase in the sequence homology between the two exchanging proteins. This suggests that multiple regions of the rod domain of chicken MyHC including S2 can contribute toward dimerization specificity.