Tryptic digestion of scallop S1: evidence for a complex between the two light-chains and a heavy-chain peptide

When scallop S1(+LC) (formerly called CaMg S1) is digested by trypsin, the heavy chain degrades while the two light chains remain complexed to each other and a peptide fragment of the heavy chain. The three components of the complex comigrate during electrophoresis under nondissociating conditions and can be purified by chromatography and concentrated by precipitation with ammonium sulphate in the presence of millimolar calcium ions. The truncated regulatory light chain remains associated with the binary complex consisting of the peptide and essential light chain as long as divalent cations are present; in the presence of EDTA it dissociates. This behaviour of the light chains-peptide complex mimics that of the intact molecule. The effect of bound light chains and bound actin on the susceptibility to tryptic digestion was studied using scallop S1(+LC) and S1(-LC) (EDTA S1 according to previous nomenclature). The heavy chains of both types of S1 are labile and have two main sites susceptible to proteolysis. Tryptic digestion on site A produces an N-terminal peptide of around 70 000 and a C-terminal 24 000 fragment from S1(+LC) and a 20 000 C-terminal fragment from S1(-LC); the latter is prone to further proteolysis. Thus S1(-LC), produced in the absence of bound regulatory light chain is shorter on the C-terminal end. Proteolysis on site A abolishes actin-activated ATPase activity; the latter is prevented by digesting acto-S1. The rate of tryptic digestion on site B is somewhat slower than on site A; when either S1 is split at this site an N-terminal 63 000 peptide is produced. The corresponding C-terminal peptide can be obtained from acto-S1 when hydrolysis on site A is prevented; this is estimated as around 31 000 derived from S1(+LC) and 28 000 derived from S1(-LC). The results are compared with similar experiments where vertebrate subfragments were digested by trypsin and the possible localization of the light-chain binding peptide in the intact heavy chain is discussed.