Tissue-specific transcriptional control of alpha- and beta-tropomyosins in chicken muscle development

During muscle maturation, isoform switching of contractile proteins to attain the adult phenotype involves both stage-specific and muscle-specific regulatory mechanisms. Chicken pectoralis major (PM) provides an interesting model to study the latter since a specific pattern of tropomyosin (TM) with repression of the beta TM isoform is displayed by the adult PM. The developmental pattern of alpha and beta fast skeletal muscle tropomyosins' (alpha f and beta TM) RNAs was investigated with 3' untranslated region specific probes. In PM, the beta TM messenger ceased to accumulate after hatching through a transcriptional control, as shown by run-on assays, so that, at Day 8 ex ovo, no beta TM mRNA was detected. In this same muscle, in parallel with the disappearance of the beta TM mRNA, there was a boost in the accumulation of the alpha f TM mRNA. In the leg muscles, following hatching, there was only a moderate increase in the level of the alpha f TM mRNA, together with a slight decrease in the accumulation of the beta TM mRNA. Taken together, these results show that chicken muscle maturation involves tissue-specific transcriptional control of tropomyosin genes and could suggest a possible coordinate regulation of the two genes.