Fast Pressure Jumps Can Perturb Calcium and Magnesium Binding to Troponin C F29W

We have used rapid pressure jump and stopped-flow fluorometry to investigate calcium and magnesium binding to F29W chicken skeletal troponin C. Increased pressure perturbed calcium binding to the N-terminal sites in the presence and absence of magnesium and provided an estimate for the volume change upon calcium binding (−12 mL/mol). We observed a biphasic response to a pressure change which was characterized by fast and slow reciprocal relaxation times of the order 1000/s and 100/s. Between pCa 8−5.4 and at troponin C concentrations of 8−28 μM, the slow relaxation times were invariant, indicating that a protein isomerization was rate-limiting. The fast event was only detected over a very narrow pCa range (5.6−5.4). We have devised a model based on a Monod−Wyman−Changeux cooperative mechanism with volume changes of −9 and +6 mL/mol for the calcium binding to the regulatory sites and <i>closed</i> to <i>open</i> protein isomerization steps, respectively. In the absence of magnesium, we discovered that calcium binding to the C-terminal sites could be detected, despite their position distal to the calcium-sensitive tryptophan, with a volume change of +25 mL/mol. We used this novel observation to measure competitive magnesium binding to the C-terminal sites and deduced an affinity in the range 200−300 μM (and a volume change of +35 mL/mol). This affinity is an order of magnitude tighter than equilibrium fluorescence data suggest based on a model of direct competitive binding. Magnesium thus indirectly modulates binding to the N-terminal sites, which may act as a fine-tuning mechanism <i>in vivo