Filament assembly properties of the sarcomeric myosin heavy chain

Meat is the edible muscle tissue of animals. The sarcomere is the fundamental functional unit of muscle. Growth and development of muscle is accomplished by the highly ordered accretion and assembly of the constituent proteins in the sarcomere. Primary amino acid sequence elements of the constitutive proteins carry the information necessary for determining the final architecture of the sarcomere. The mechanisms by which the constitutive proteins are assembled and function together to form the sarcomere and produce muscle contraction is just now beginning to be understood. The predominant protein in the sarcomere, found in the thick filament system, is myosin. In physiological buffers purified myosin spontaneously assembles into a synthetic thick filament with a dramatic resemblance to the native thick filament. Some of the amino acid sequence elements contributing to myosin's assembly properties may also be critical to myosin's solubility function, which is so crucial to the manufacture of high quality prepared meat products. This review summarizes recent experimental results contributing to our understanding of the mechanism of sarcomeric muscle myosin assembly.