Abstract
Myosin rod protein (MRP) is a naturally occurring 155 kDa protein in Drosophila that includes the myosin heavy chain (MHC) rod domain, but contains a unique 77 amino acid residue N-terminal region that replaces the motor and light chain-binding domains of S1. MRP is a major component of myofilaments in certain direct flight muscles (DFMs) and it is present in other somatic, cardiac and visceral muscles in adults, larvae and embryos, where it is coexpressed and polymerized into thick filaments along with MHC. DFM49 has a relatively high content of MRP, and is characterized by an unusually disordered myofibrillar ultrastructure, which has been attributed to lack of cross-bridges in the filament regions containing MRP. Here, we characterize in detail the structural organization of myofibrils in adult and embryonic Drosophila muscles containing various MRP/MHC ratios and in embryos carrying a null mutation for the single MHC gene. We examined MRP in embryonic body wall and intestinal muscles as well as in DFMs with consistent findings. In DFMs numbers 49, 53 and 55, MRP is expressed at a high level relative to MHC and is associated with disorder in the positioning of thin filaments relative to thick filaments in the areas of overlap. Embryos that express MRP in the absence of MHC form thick filaments that participate in the assembly of sarcomeres, suggesting that myofibrillogenesis does not depend on strong myosin–actin interactions. Further, although thick filaments are not well ordered, the relative positioning of thin filaments is fairly regular in MRP-only containing sarcomeres, confirming the hypothesis that the observed disorder in MRP/MHC containing wild-type muscles is due to the combined action between the functional behavior of MRP and MHC myosin heads. Our findings support the conclusion that MRP has an active function to modulate the contractile activity of muscles in which it is expressed.
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