Tropomyosin Isoforms Segregate into Distinct Clusters on Single Actin Filaments

Tropomyosins (Tpms) are rod-shaped proteins that interact head-to-tail to form a continuous polymer along both sides of most cellular actin filaments. Head-to-tail interaction between adjacent Tpm molecules and the formation of an overlap complex between them leads to the assembly of actin filaments with one type of Tpm isoform in time and space. Variations in the affinity of tropomyosin isoforms for different actin structures are proposed as a potential sorting mechanism. However, the detailed mechanisms of the spatio-temporal sorting of Tpms remain elusive. In this study, we investigated the early intermediates during actin–tropomyosin filament assembly, using a skeletal/cardiac Tpm isoform (Tpm1.1) and a cytoskeletal isoform (Tpm1.6) that differ only in the last 27 amino acids. We investigated how the muscle isoform Tpm1.1 and the cytoskeletal isoform Tpm1.6 nucleate domains on the actin filament, and tested whether (1) recruitment is affected by the actin isoform (muscle vs. cytoskeletal) and (2) whether there is specificity in recruiting the same isoform to a domain at these early stages. To address these questions, actin filaments were exposed to low concentrations of fluorescent tropomyosins in solution. The filaments were immobilized onto glass coverslips and the pattern of decoration was visualized by TIRF microscopy. We show that at the early assembly stage, tropomyosins formed multiple distinct fluorescent domains (here termed “cluster”) on the actin filaments. An automated image analysis algorithm was developed and validated to identify clusters and estimate the number of tropomyosins in each cluster. The analysis showed that tropomyosin isoform sorting onto an actin filament is unlikely to be driven by a preference for nucleating on the corresponding muscle or cytoskeletal actin isoforms, but rather is facilitated by a higher probability of incorporating the same tropomyosin isoforms into an early assembly intermediate. We showed that the 27 amino acids at the end of each tropomyosin seem to provide enough molecular information for the attachment of the same tropomyosin isoforms adjacent to each other on an actin filament. This results in the formation of homogeneous clusters composed of the same isoform rather than clusters with mixed isoforms.