The sedimentation of myosin

Abstract

The sedimentation of rabbit myosin has been investigated under conditions of varying temperature, centrifugal field and solvent composition. From 4[degree] to 19[degree] the corrected sedimentation coefficient is reproducible over a range of solvent composition, and its variation with concentration is given by [image] Variation in the number of precipitations of the myosin had no observable effect on the sedimentation behavior. At 25[degree] the occurrence of previously reported apparent anomalies has been confirmed. These are small at high centrifugal fields, but relatively large at low fields. Evidence is presented to show that these anomalies may be explained in terms of the transformation of myosin into faster-sedimenting species, without the necessity for assigning unusual hydrodynamic properties to the myosin molecule. With [image] the calculated molecular weight is 540,000.