Studies of the Chemo-Mechanical Conversion in Artificially Produced Streamings

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Abstract
Steady and uniform streamings (SUS) of HMM solutions were set up in the presence of Mg-ATP in a circular slit, on both side-walls of which a Millipore filter was fixed; F-actin filaments from rabbit skeletal muscle were bound onto the Millipore filter by cyanogen bromide in the flow. The direction of the SUS was specifically determined by that of the flow during the fixing of F-actin and was independent of the direction of the initial velocity applied externally to the HMM solutions. The SUS continued for about 90 min with a velocity of about 20 μm/s at 20°C. There was a strong correlation between the acto-HMM ATPase activity and the velocity of SUS when the salt concentration was varied. Moreover, this was also the case when the ATPase activity was controlled by Ca2+, when native tropomyosin was bound to F-actin in the circular slit. Careful examination led to the conclusions that F-actin filaments are fixed on the Millipore filter with a specific polarity and that a chemo-mechanical system had been successfully reconstituted in our “stream cells” in which chemical energy from ATP is converted to the mechanical energy of streaming.