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Author(s): Kenneth C. Holmes (corresponding author) [1]; Isabel Angert [1]; F. Jon Kull [1, 2]; Werner Jahn [1]; Rasmus R. Schröder [1] Muscle contraction involves the cyclic interaction of the [...]

The description of the molecular contacts between actin and myosin is important for comprehending the force-generating process in muscle and other cells. An atomic model for the actomyosin complex, produced by the combination of atomic-X-ray structure of F-actin3, 4 and chicken myosin S1(5), is a three dimensional structure, reconstructed from electron micrographs of frozen-hydrated F-actin, decorated with recombinant Dictyostelium myosin S1. The model reveals the precise positions of actin and myosin molecules.

Muscle contraction consists of a cyclical interaction between myosin and actin driven by the concomitant hydrolysis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). A model for the rigor complex of F actin and the myosin head was obtained by combining the molecular structures of the individual proteins with the low-resolution electron density maps of the complex derived by cryo-electron microscopy and image analysis. The spatial relation between the ATP binding pocket on myosin and the major contact area on actin suggests a working hypothesis for the crossbridge cycle that is consistent with previous independent structural and biochemical studies., Muscle contraction occurs when two sets of interdigitating filaments, the thin actin filaments and the thick myosin filaments, slide past one another. A widely accepted theory to explain this process [...]

How monomers of the cytoskeletal protein actin join to form the stable polymers crucial to muscle contraction and cellular motility has been a long-standing question. A state-of-the-art approach provides an [...]

Author(s): Kenneth C. Holmes [1] by Andrew Brown Oxford University Press: 2005. 576 pp. PS25 [illus. 1] J. D. Bernal, who died in 1971, was one of the most influential [...]

Author(s): Kenneth C. Holmes [1] Light is a Messenger: the Life and Science of William Lawrence Bragg by Graeme K. Hunter Oxford University Press: 2004. 320 pp. £35, $59.50 [illus. [...]