Calcium ion-regulated thin filaments from vascular smooth muscle

Myosin and actin competition tests indicated the presence of both thin-filament and myosin-linked Ca2+-regulatory systems in pig aorta and turkey gizzard smooth-muscle actomyosin. A thin-filament preparation was obtained from pig aortas. The thin filaments had no significant ATPase activity [1.1 +/- 2.6 nmol/mg per min (mean +/- S.D.)], but they activated skeletal-muscle myosin ATPase up to 25-fold [500 nmol/mg of myosin per min (mean +/- S.D.)] in the presence of 10(-4) M free Ca2+. At 10(-8) M-Ca2+ the thin filaments activated myosin ATPase activity only one-third as much. Thin-filament activation of myosin ATPase activity increased markedly in the range 10(-6)-10(-5) M-Ca2+ and was half maximal at 2.7 x 10(-6) M (pCa2+ 5.6). The skeletal myosin-aorta-thin-filament mixture gave a biphasic ATPase-rate-versus-ATP-concentration curve at 10(-8) M-Ca2+ similar to the curve obtained with skeletal-muscle thin filaments. Thin filaments bound up to 9.5 mumol of Ca2+/g in the presence of MgATP2-. In the range 0.06-27 microM-Ca2+ binding was hyperbolic with an estimated binding constant of (0.56 +/- 0.07) x 10(6) M-1 (mean +/- S.D.) and maximum binding of 8.0 +/- 0.8 mumol/g (mean +/- S.D.). Significantly less Ca2+ bound in the absence of ATP. The thin filaments contained actin, tropomyosin and several other unidentified proteins. 6 M-Urea/polyacrylamide-gel electrophoresis at pH 8.3 showed proteins that behaved like troponin I and troponin C. This was confirmed by forming interspecific complexes between radioactive skeletal-muscle troponin I and troponin C and the aorta thin-filament proteins. The thin filaments contained at least 1.4 mumol of a troponin C-like protein/g and at least 1.1 mumol of a troponin I-like protein/g.