Sucrose increases the activation energy barrier for actin–myosin strong binding

• Sucrose slows actin sliding velocities by inhibiting the rate of actin–myosin strong binding.
• Sucrose specifically inhibits actin–myosin strong bond formation and not Pi release.
• These results suggest that actin sliding velocities are influenced by the kinetics of actin–myosin strong bond formation.

To determine the mechanism by which sucrose slows in vitro actin sliding velocities, V, we used stopped flow kinetics and a single molecule binding assay, SiMBA. We observed that in the absence of ATP, sucrose (880 mM) slowed the rate of actin–myosin (A–M) strong binding by 71 ± 8% with a smaller inhibitory effect observed on spontaneous rigor dissociation (21 ± 3%). Similarly, in the presence of ATP, sucrose slowed strong binding associated with Pi release by 85 ± 9% with a smaller inhibitory effect on ATP-induced A–M dissociation, kT (39 ± 2%). Sucrose had no noticeable effect on any other step in the ATPase reaction. In SiMBA, sucrose had a relatively small effect on the diffusion coefficient for actin fragments (25 ± 2%), and with stopped flow we showed that sucrose increased the activation energy barrier for A–M strong binding by 37 ± 3%, indicating that sucrose inhibits the rate of A–M strong binding by slowing bond formation more than diffusional searching. The inhibitory effects of sucrose on the rate of A–M rigor binding (71%) are comparable in magnitude to sucrose’s effects on both V (79 ± 33% decrease) and maximal actin-activated ATPase, kcat, (81 ± 16% decrease), indicating that the rate of A–M strong bond formation significantly influences both kcat and V.