The Tropomyosin Binding Region of Cardiac Troponin T Modulates Crossbridge Recruitment Dynamics in Rat Cardiac Muscle Fibers

Abstract The cardiac muscle comprises dynamically interacting components that use allosteric/cooperative mechanisms to yield unique heart-specific properties. An essential protein in this allosteric/cooperative mechanism is cardiac muscle troponin T (cTnT), the central region (CR) and the T2 region of which differ significantly from those of fast skeletal muscle troponin T (fsTnT). To understand the biological significance of such sequence heterogeneity, we replaced the T1 or T2 domain of rat cTnT (RcT1 or RcT2) with its counterpart from rat fsTnT (RfsT1or RfsT2) to generate RfsT1-RcT2 and RcT1-RfsT2 recombinant proteins. In addition to contractile function measurements, dynamic features of RfsT1-RcT2- and RcT1-RfsT2-reconstituted rat cardiac muscle fibers were captured by fitting the recruitment–distortion model to the force response of small-amplitude (0.5%) muscle length changes. RfsT1-RcT2 fibers showed a 40% decrease in tension and a 44% decrease in ATPase activity, but RcT1-RfsT2 fibers were unaffected. The magnitude of length-mediated increase in crossbridge (XB) recruitment ( E 0 ) decreased by ~ 33% and the speed of XB recruitment ( b ) increased by ~ 100% in RfsT1-RcT2 fibers. Our data suggest the following: (1) the CR of cTnT modulates XB recruitment dynamics; (2) the N-terminal end region of cTnT has a synergistic effect on the ability of the CR to modulate XB recruitment dynamics; (3) the T2 region is important for tuning the Ca 2 + regulation of cardiac thin filaments. The combined effects of CR–tropomyosin interactions and the modulating effect of the N-terminal end of cTnT on CR–tropomyosin interactions may lead to the emergence of a unique property that tunes contractile dynamics to heart rates.