Trypsin digestion of bovine cardiac troponin C in the presence and absence of calcium.

The rate of tryptic digestion of cardiac troponin C (cTNC) has been shown to be dependent on Ca2+ as was noted earlier for skeletal TNC (sTNC). Two representative peptides have been characterized on the basis of amino acid composition and partial amino terminal sequence analysis. Circular dichroism and fluorescence studies monitored their response to the presence of Ca2+. Their ability to form complexes with the ATPase inhibitory subunit of cardiac troponin (cTNI) was determined by urea - polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and fluorescence experiments. The ability of these peptides to substitute for whole cTNC in restoring the ATPase activity of a partially inhibited synthetic actomyosin system was also explored. The N-terminal peptide 1-88 already contains a large amount of ordered structure, which indicates that the alpha-helices flanking binding site II of cTNC exist independently of Ca2+. Consequently this peptide shows limited increase in structure in the presence of Ca2+. It binds to cTNI independently of the presence of Ca2+ and could substitute for whole cTNC by relaxing the inhibitory effect of cTNI. The C-terminal peptide 103-158 has a low amount of secondary structure in the absence of Ca2+ but this increases dramatically in the presence of this cation. This peptide could only form a stable complex with cTNI in the presence of Ca2+ and was unable to release the inhibitory effect of cTNI.

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