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Speaker Professor Neil Kad, School of Biosciences, University of Kent,
Title Command and control: In vitro and In vivo molecular imaging of muscle regulation
Host Elisabeth Ehler
Abstract In this talk I will be discussing some of our recent work aimed at understanding the molecular mechanisms of muscle regulation at the thin and thick filament levels. Using single molecule imaging we are able to obtain a dynamic picture of these events with high spatial precision. We find thin filament activation follows a scheme that fits the canonical three state model, surprisingly however, relaxation shows coordinated release of myosin heads from the thin filament, implying an active process of detachment. The thick filament is also studied at the single molecule level, here we investigate how myosin binding protein-C can both activate and repress the thin filament using an assay that suspends individual actin thin filaments between surface attached pedestals. Finally, I will also discuss some very recent work where we have studied the ATP consumption of individual myosins within the sarcomeric structure of a myofibril, with enough precision to delineate the thick filament zones. Altogether, the sarcomere is a fascinating machine that requires multiple levels of tuning to meet external demands, and these approaches begin to shed light on how this is achieved.