In vitro assembly of homopolymer and copolymer filaments from intermediate filament subunits of muscle and fibroblastic cells.

This paper presents evidence that the intermediate filament (IF) subunits of muscle cells (skeletin or desmin) and fibroblastic cells (decamin or vimentin) separately form homopolymer IF in vitro and, when mixed, prefer to form copolymer IF in vitro. Because they coexist in cells, they may also form copolymers in vivo. The IFs of baby hamster kidney fibroblasts (BHK-21) consist of a major subunit, decamin, and two minor subunits which, on the basis of two-dimensional gel and peptide mapping criteria, are identical to the alpha and beta subunits of smooth muscle desmin. The subunits differ only in their degrees of phosphorylation: alpha desmin contained 2 mol/mol of O-phosphoserine whereas beta desmin contained none. The decamin and desmin subunits assembled into homopolymer IF in vitro in high yield from purified denatured subunits under identical conditions of pH and ionic strength. However, homopolymer decamin IF disassembled into soluble protofilaments in solutions of ionic strength less than 0.05 mol/liter whereas homopolymer desmin IF disassembled at ionic strength less than 0.03 mol/liter. When decamin and desmin were mixed together as denatured subunits or as soluble protofilaments, the IF assembled in vitro had solubility properties intermediate between those of the homopolymer IFs, indicating that the two subunits had formed copolymer IF. The stoichiometry of copolymerization as determined in mixtures in which one subunit was present in excess was suggestive of the formation of three-chain units. The possibility of nonspecific aggregation was eliminated by isolation of stable three-chain alpha-helix-enriched particles from such IF. When tracer amounts of [35S]methionine-labeled decamin were mixed with desmin, labeled IFs were obtained under conditions in which homopolymer decamin IFs were soluble. These in vitro findings may be of physiological significance because native BHK-21 IF also had solubility properties similar to those of the copolymer IF.