Tissue specificity of tropomyosin from the crayfish, Cambarus clarki

The molecular heterogeneity and tissue specificity of crustacean tropomyosin were investigated, using muscle and nonmuscle tissues from the crayfish, Cambarus clarki. In muscle, three types of tropomyosin isoforms were found on two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. One of them was specific to cardiac muscle, and the other two were shared by skeletal and visceral muscles. In nonmuscle tissues, four types of isoforms were found on two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and in immunoreplica tests using an antiserum against crayfish skeletal muscle tropomyosin. Two of them were common to the muscle isoforms, but the other two were not detected in muscles. Furthermore, nonmuscle tissues contained several peculiar isoforms, the electrophoretic mobilities of which were considerably higher than those of the other isoforms mentioned above. When tropomyosin was purified from the mid-gut gland, these isoforms with high mobilities were found in the crude tropomyosin preparation. These results showed that the crayfish tropomyosin was heterogeneous and that the isoforms were distributed in a tissue-specific manner, like vertebrate tropomyosin. However, the results did not coincide with those of our previous study on horseshoe crab tropomyosin, which showed molecular heterogeneity but no tissue specificity. In view of the difference in the isoform distributions between the two major groups (Crustacea and Merostomata) of Arthropoda, the significance of the tissue specificity of tropomyosin isoforms was discussed.