Some properties of acid-reassembled tropomyosin

The preference for parallelism of the two chains in tropomyosin coiled coils is thought to result from interchain salt bridges. To examine this idea, studies are presented of tropomyosin molecules reassembled from chaotropic solvents in acid solution, where cross-links cannot exist. The acid-reassembled molecules are appreciably less disulfide cross-linkable in acid than native molecules, a result explainable if some antiparallel dimers indeed form at low pH. Physical studies (backbone- and tyrosine-region CD and intrinsic viscosity) indicate that refolding in acid yields a molecular population demonstrably different in tyrosine-region CD from native, but having comparable (but not identical) helix content, thermal stability, and dimensions. Moreover, the refolding in acid after either thermal or chaotropic-solvent denaturation yields the same final state, arguing that it is an equilibrium state. All these results are consistent with, but do not prove, that the acid-reassembled population includes an appreciable fraction (2/3) of antiparallel coiled-coil dimers.