{"id":45,"date":"2012-11-22T17:16:45","date_gmt":"2012-11-22T17:16:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/biosciences\/?p=45"},"modified":"2012-11-22T17:16:45","modified_gmt":"2012-11-22T17:16:45","slug":"research-study-investigates-human-cardiac-myosin-function","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/biosciences\/2012\/11\/22\/research-study-investigates-human-cardiac-myosin-function\/","title":{"rendered":"Research study investigates human cardiac myosin function"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike Geeves,<\/a> Professor of Physical Biochemistry in the School of Biosciences, comments on a research article published recently featuring work from his laboratory.<\/p>\n

“Myosin is the motor protein that drives cardiac muscle contraction and blood circulation.\u00a0 Mutations in myosin cause inherited heart disease but obtaining human tissue to study the proteins has been difficult. Colleagues in the USA have now expressed\u00a0human myosin in\u00a0cells and purified the myosin. We show the two human cardiac myosin isoforms (\u03b1-from atria, and\u00a0\u03b2-from ventricles) differ much more than had been thought. \u03b1-myosin, in fact,\u00a0surprisingly behaving like a fast skeletal muscle myosin. The work will now allow a new study of the effect of mutations on human myosin function.”<\/p>\n

Prof. Geeves teaches\u00a0all of our undergraduate students\u00a0the function of muscle\u00a0in our core Physiology module. In the final year, his research group’s pioneering work on molecular motors features strongly in\u00a0Protein Structure and Function, a core module on our Biochemistry degree programme.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Deacon, J. C., Bloemink, M. J., Rezavandi, H., Geeves, M. A. & Leinwand, L. A. (2012) Identification of functional differences between recombinant human alpha and beta cardiac myosin motors. J Cell Mol Life Sci\u00a0 69, 261-77.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n