Separation and characterization of homo and hetero-oligomers of the intermediate filament proteins desmin and vimentin.

Affinity chromatography on single-stranded (ss)DNA-cellulose in conjunction with gel permeation chromatography in the presence of urea was employed to separate the intermediate filament (IF) protein complement of catalytically oxidized BHK-21 cell Triton cytoskeletons into disulfide-cross-linked homo- and heterodimers of desmin and vimentin and uncross-linked homodimers. The same separation was performed on a desmin-vimentin mixture under autoxidizing conditions in 6 M-urea to obtain the respective cross-linked collision complexes of both proteins. In 5 M-urea, the oxidation products were identified as dimers that were physically indistinguishable from uncross-linked homodimers, suggesting that they were in the form of partially denatured face-to face pairs. Heterodimers derived from intact IFs were identical to those derived from collision complexes. In the presence of 2-mercaptoethanol, heterodimers were unstable and transformed spontaneously into homodimers. After removal of urea, all cross-linked dimers were totally unable to polymerize into filaments; however, in the presence of 2-mercaptoethanol they showed a normal assembly competence. This inability of oxidized homo- and heterodimers to polymerize, together with the relatively low yield of cross-linked dimers obtained from cytoskeletons, is probably due to the introduction of steric strain into the dimers by disulfide bond formation. Substantial amounts of cross-linked heterodimers could also be isolated from IFs reconstituted from mixtures of desmin and vimentin in their homodimeric or tetrameric forms. Taken together, these results suggest that the cross-linked dimers isolated from cytoskeletons arise from a reaction between subfilament strands of IFs rather than from disulfide bond formation within pre-existing dimers and that the heterotypic IFs of BHK-21 cells are largely formed from homodimers and tetramers, respectively, rather than from heterodimers. The differential capacity of desmin and vimentin to interact with ssDNA has also been exploited to distinguish between homotypic and heterotypic protofilaments, the latter consisting of one homodimer of each protein species. This distinction could be made on the basis of characteristic differences in the sedimentation behavior of the respective protein-DNA complexes.