CSM News Electronic Edition Volume 3, number 18 December 3, 1994 Please submit abstracts of your papers as soon as they have been accepted for publication by sending them to CSM-News@worms.cmsbio.nwu.edu. Back issues of CSM-News, the CSM Reference database and other useful information is available by anonymous ftp from worms.cmsbio.nwu.edu [165.124.233.50], via Gopher at the same address, or by World Wide Web through www.nwu.edu. ****************************************** International Dictyostelium Meeting, 1995 ****************************************** The next International Dictyostelium Meeting will take place in Dourdan from June 25th to June 30th, 1995. Dourdan is a small city located at 40 km from Paris. It can be reached by public transportation within one hour from the center of Paris. The meeting will be held in a resort designed for familly vacation, next to one of the nicest forests around Paris. The registration fee will be between 3, 000 FF and 4,000 FF depending on the number of participants, the type of room and on the selected options. This will include a get-together party on Sunday June 26th in the evening, all meals from Monday to Friday noon, including wine and coffee. It also includes coffee breaks and coupons for free beer. A visit of the ancient city of Chartres on Wenesday afternoon and a Conference banquet on Thursday night are planned. A registration form will be mailed upon receit of the following questionnaire. Please circulate the questionnaire around in your lab. Hope to see you next June Michel Satre & Michel Veron ********************************* PRE-REGISTRATION QUESTIONNAIRE ********************************* First Name, Last Name Full postal address Phone Fax e.mail Please ANSWER BY E.MAIL ONLY to : mveron@pasteur.fr =========== Abstracts =========== Structural Analysis of Myosin Heavy Chain Kinase A from Dictyostelium: Evidence for a highly divergent protein kinase domain, an amino-terminal coiled-coil domain and a domain homologous to the Beta-Subunit of heterotrimeric G proteins. Lidia M. Futey*, Quintus G. Medley#, Graham P. C=F4t=E9#, and Thomas T. Egelhoff* *Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, Cleveland OH 44106 #Department of Biochemistry, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, K7L 3N6 Canada J. Biol. Chem., in press. ABSTRACT We report here the cloning and characterization of the gene encoding the 130 kDa myosin heavy chain kinase (MHCK A) from the amoeba Dictyostelium. Previous studies have shown that purified MHCK A phosphorylates threonines in the carboxyl-terminal tail portion of the Dictyostelium myosin II heavy chain and that phosphorylation of these sites is critical in regulating the assembly and disassembly of myosin II filaments in vitro and in vivo. Biochemical analysis of MHCK A, together with analysis of the primary sequence suggests that the amino terminal approximately 500 amino acids form an *-helical coiled-coil domain, and that residues from approximately 860 to the carboxyl terminus (residue 1146) form a domain with significant similarity to the *-subunit of heterotrimeric G proteins. No part of the MHCK A sequence displays significant similarity to the catalytic domain of conventional eukaryotic protein kinases. However, both native and recombinant MHCK A displayed autophosphorylation activity following renaturation from SDS gels and MHCK A expressed in E. coli phosphorylated purified Dictyostelium myosin, confirming that MHCK A is a bone fide protein kinase. Cross-linking studies demonstrated that native MHCK A is a multimer, consistent with the presence of an amino-terminal coiled-coil domain. Southern blot analysis indicates that MHCK A is encoded by a single gene that has no detectable introns. -------------------------------------------------------------------- [End CSN-News, vol. 3 number 18]