Blebbistatin is a commonly used molecular tool for the specific inhibition of various myosin II isoforms both in vitro and in vivo. Despite its popularity, the use of blebbistatin is hindered by its poor water-solubility (below 10 micromolar in aqueous buffer) and blue-light sensitivity, resulting in the photoconversion of the molecule, causing severe cellular phototoxicity in addition to its cytotoxicity. Furthermore, blebbistatin forms insoluble aggregates in water-based media above 10 micromolar with extremely high fluorescence and also high adherence to different types of surfaces, which biases its experimental usage. Here, we report a highly soluble (440 micromolar in aqueous buffer), non-fluorescent and photostable C15 amino-substituted derivative of blebbistatin, called para-aminoblebbistatin. Importantly, it is neither photo- nor cytotoxic, as demonstrated on HeLa cells and zebrafish embryos. Additionally, para-aminoblebbistatin bears similar myosin II inhibitory properties to blebbistatin or para-nitroblebbistatin (not to be confused with the C7 substituted nitroblebbistatin), tested on rabbit skeletal muscle myosin S1 and on M2 and HeLa cells. Due to its drastically improved solubility and photochemical feature, as well as lack of photo- or cytotoxicity, para-aminoblebbistatin may become a feasible replacement for blebbistatin, especially at applications when high concentrations of the inhibitor or blue light irradiation is required.

Blebbistatin, the best characterized myosin II-inhibitor, is commonly used to study the biological roles of various myosin II isoforms. Despite its popularity, the use of blebbistatin is greatly hindered by its blue-light sensitivity, resulting in phototoxicity and photoconversion of the molecule. Additionally, blebbistatin has serious cytotoxic side effects even in the absence of irradiation, which may easily lead to the misinterpretation of experimental results since the cytotoxicity-derived phenotype could be attributed to the inhibition of the myosin II function. Here we report the synthesis as well as the in vitro and in vivo characterization of a photostable, C15 nitro derivative of blebbistatin with unaffected myosin II inhibitory properties. Importantly, para-nitroblebbistatin is neither phototoxic nor cytotoxic, as shown by cellular and animal tests; therefore it can serve as an unrestricted and complete replacement of blebbistatin both in vitro and in vivo.

Serralysins are generally thought to function as pathogenicity factors of bacteria, but so far no hard evidence of this (e.g., specific substrate proteins that are sensitive to the cleavage by these proteases) has been found. We have looked for substrate proteins to a serralysin-type proteinase, PrtA, in a natural host-pathogen molecular interaction system involving Manduca sexta and Photorhabdus luminescens.

Photoreactive compounds are important tools in life sciences that allow precisely timed covalent crosslinking of ligands and targets. Using a unique technique we have synthesized azidoblebbistatin, which is a derivative of blebbistatin, the most widely used myosin inhibitor. Without UV irradiation azidoblebbistatin exhibits identical inhibitory properties to those of blebbistatin. Using UV irradiation, azidoblebbistatin can be covalently crosslinked to myosin, which greatly enhances its in vitro and in vivo effectiveness. Photo-crosslinking also eliminates limitations associated with the relatively low myosin affinity and water solubility of blebbistatin. The wavelength used for photo-crosslinking is not toxic for cells and tissues, which confers a great advantage in in vivo tests. Because the crosslink results in an irreversible association of the inhibitor to myosin and the irradiation eliminates the residual activity of unbound inhibitor molecules, azidoblebbistatin has a great potential to become a highly effective tool in both structural studies of actomyosin contractility and the investigation of cellular and physiological functions of myosin II. We used azidoblebbistatin to identify previously unknown low-affinity targets of the inhibitor (EC 50 ≥ 50 μM) in Dictyostelium discoideum, while the strongest interactant was found to be myosin II (EC 50 = 5 μM). Our results demonstrate that azidoblebbistatin, and potentially other azidated drugs, can become highly useful tools for the identification of strong-and weak-binding cellular targets and the determination of the apparent binding affinities in in vivo conditions. interactom profile | azidation | photoactivation V arious biological processes, including muscle contraction, cell migration, differentiation, and cytokinesis require the activity of myosin II, a class of actin-based ATP-driven motor proteins. Cell-permeable small molecules that can perturb myosin functions have greatly aided the dissection and understanding of molecular processes underlying the above phenomena. Myosin II inhibitors described to date include 2,3-butanedione monoxime (BDM) (1, 2), N-benzyl-p-toluenesulphonamide (BTS) (3), and blebbistatin (4-6). As BDM has turned out to have a broad effect on many other proteins (7) and the inhibitory effect of BTS is limited to fast skeletal muscle myosin, until now blebbistatin has been the only potent tool for specific blocking of myosin II-dependent processes in various species and cell types. Recent data have shown that halogenated pseudilins also have nonspecific inhibitory effects on myosin II isoforms (8-10).In vitro, blebbistatin inhibits vertebrate striated muscle and nonmuscle myosin II isoforms as well as Dictyostelium discoideum (Dd) myosin II by about 95%, with an IC 50 of 0.5-5 μM (11). Vertebrate smooth muscle and Acanthamoeba myosin II are incompletely inhibited even at high blebbistatin concentrations. In vivo experiments performed with Dd showed that the effective inhibition of myosin II-dependent processes, including growth in...