A Third Look at the Structure of Leiomodin Bound to Actin.

Our quest in science is to understand Nature by seeking the truth. One element of this quest is verification, usually by building directly on past work with new experimental data, theory, or interpretation. Progress can also be made by reevaluating published data; I have done this multiple times during my career, so it must be a common experience. Such is the case in an article on a crystal structure of the protein leiomodin bound to actin by Boczkowska et al. in this issue of the Biophysical Journal (1).

[1]  T. Pollard,et al.  The Role of the FH1 Domain and Profilin in Formin-Mediated Actin-Filament Elongation and Nucleation , 2008, Current Biology.

[2]  Jianpeng Ma,et al.  Mechanisms of leiomodin 2-mediated regulation of actin filament in muscle cells , 2015, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[3]  V. Fowler,et al.  Feisty filaments: actin dynamics in the red blood cell membrane skeleton , 2016, Current opinion in hematology.

[4]  V. Fowler,et al.  Tropomodulin is associated with the free (pointed) ends of the thin filaments in rat skeletal muscle , 1993, The Journal of cell biology.

[5]  V. Fowler,et al.  Leiomodins: larger members of the tropomodulin (Tmod) gene family. , 2001, Genomics.

[6]  T. Pollard.  Actin and Actin-Binding Proteins. , 2016, Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology.

[7]  T. Pollard,et al.  Leiomodin Is an Actin Filament Nucleator in Muscle Cells , 2008, Science.

[8]  R. Dominguez,et al.  Tropomodulins and Leiomodins: Actin Pointed End Caps and Nucleators in Muscles. , 2017, Biophysical journal.

[9]  V. Fowler,et al.  Tropomodulin caps the pointed ends of actin filaments , 1994, The Journal of cell biology.

[10]  R. Dominguez,et al.  Crystal Structure of Leiomodin 2 in Complex with Actin: A Structural and Functional Reexamination. , 2017, Biophysical journal.

[11]  R. Dominguez,et al.  Actin cytoskeleton. Mechanism of actin filament pointed-end capping by tropomodulin. , 2014 .

[12]  V. Fowler.  Identification and purification of a novel Mr 43,000 tropomyosin-binding protein from human erythrocyte membranes. , 1987, The Journal of biological chemistry.

[13]  R. Dominguez,et al.  How Leiomodin and Tropomodulin use a common fold for different actin assembly functions , 2015, Nature Communications.

[14]  Carl Frieden.  Polymerization of actin: mechanism of the Mg2+-induced process at pH 8 and 20 degrees C. , 1983, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.