Molecular-scale visualization of sarcomere contraction within native cardiomyocytes.

Sarcomeres, the basic contractile units of striated muscle, produce the forces driving muscular contraction through cross-bridge interactions between actin-containing thin filaments and myosin II-based thick filaments. Until now, direct visualization of the molecular architecture underlying sarcomere contractility has remained elusive. Here, we use in situ cryo-electron tomography to unveil sarcomere contraction in frozen-hydrated neonatal rat cardiomyocytes. We show that the hexagonal lattice of the thick filaments is already established at the neonatal stage, with an excess of thin filaments outside the trigonal positions. Structural assessment of actin polarity by subtomogram averaging reveals that thin filaments in the fully activated state form overlapping arrays of opposite polarity in the center of the sarcomere. Our approach provides direct evidence for thin filament sliding during muscle contraction and may serve as a basis for structural understanding of thin filament activation and actomyosin interactions inside unperturbed cellular environments.

Reconstitution of contractile actomyosin rings in vesicles.

One of the grand challenges of bottom-up synthetic biology is the development of minimal machineries for cell division. The mechanical transformation of large-scale compartments, such as Giant Unilamellar Vesicles (GUVs), requires the geometry-specific coordination of active elements, several orders of magnitude larger than the molecular scale. Of all cytoskeletal structures, large-scale actomyosin rings appear to be the most promising cellular elements to accomplish this task. Here, we have adopted advanced encapsulation methods to study bundled actin filaments in GUVs and compare our results with theoretical modeling. By changing few key parameters, actin polymerization can be differentiated to resemble various types of networks in living cells. Importantly, we find membrane binding to be crucial for the robust condensation into a single actin ring in spherical vesicles, as predicted by theoretical considerations. Upon force generation by ATP-driven myosin motors, these ring-like actin structures contract and locally constrict the vesicle, forming furrow-like deformations. On the other hand, cortex-like actin networks are shown to induce and stabilize deformations from spherical shapes.

Structural impact of K63 ubiquitin on yeast translocating ribosomes under oxidative stress.

Subpopulations of ribosomes are responsible for fine tuning the control of protein synthesis in dynamic environments. K63 ubiquitination of ribosomes has emerged as a new posttranslational modification that regulates protein synthesis during cellular response to oxidative stress. K63 ubiquitin, a type of ubiquitin chain that functions independently of the proteasome, modifies several sites at the surface of the ribosome, however, we lack a molecular understanding on how this modification affects ribosome structure and function. Using cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM), we resolved the first three-dimensional (3D) structures of K63 ubiquitinated ribosomes from oxidatively stressed yeast cells at 3.5-3.2 Å resolution. We found that K63 ubiquitinated ribosomes are also present in a polysome arrangement, similar to that observed in yeast polysomes, which we determined using cryoelectron tomography (cryo-ET). We further showed that K63 ubiquitinated ribosomes are captured uniquely at the rotated pretranslocation stage of translation elongation. In contrast, cryo-EM structures of ribosomes from mutant cells lacking K63 ubiquitin resolved at 4.4-2.7 Å showed 80S ribosomes represented in multiple states of translation, suggesting that K63 ubiquitin regulates protein synthesis at a selective stage of elongation. Among the observed structural changes, ubiquitin mediates the destabilization of proteins in the 60S P-stalk and in the 40S beak, two binding regions of the eukaryotic elongation factor eEF2. These changes would impact eEF2 function, thus, inhibiting translocation. Our findings help uncover the molecular effects of K63 ubiquitination on ribosomes, providing a model of translation control during oxidative stress, which supports elongation halt at pretranslocation.

Structure of the native Sec61 protein-conducting channel.

In mammalian cells, secretory and membrane proteins are translocated across or inserted into the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) membrane by the universally conserved protein-conducting channel Sec61, which has been structurally studied in isolated, detergent-solubilized states. Here we structurally and functionally characterize native, non-solubilized ribosome-Sec61 complexes on rough ER vesicles using cryo-electron tomography and ribosome profiling. Surprisingly, the 9-Å resolution subtomogram average reveals Sec61 in a laterally open conformation, even though the channel is not in the process of inserting membrane proteins into the lipid bilayer. In contrast to recent mechanistic models for polypeptide translocation and insertion, our results indicate that the laterally open conformation of Sec61 is the only conformation present in the ribosome-bound translocon complex, independent of its functional state. Consistent with earlier functional studies, our structure suggests that the ribosome alone, even without a nascent chain, is sufficient for lateral opening of Sec61 in a lipid environment.