Muscle force is generated by myosin heads stereospecifically attached to actin

Sergey Y. Bershitsky, Andrey K. Tsaturyan, Olga N. Bershitskaya, Gregory I. Mashanov, Paul Brown, Ronald Burns and Michael A. Ferenczi ()
Additional contact information
Sergey Y. Bershitsky: *Institute of Physiology, Urals Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Andrey K. Tsaturyan: †Institute of Mechanics, Lomonosov Moscow University
Olga N. Bershitskaya: *Institute of Physiology, Urals Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Gregory I. Mashanov: *Institute of Physiology, Urals Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Paul Brown: National Institute for Medical Research
Ronald Burns: National Institute for Medical Research
Michael A. Ferenczi: National Institute for Medical Research

Nature, 1997, vol. 388, issue 6638, 186-190

Abstract: Abstract Muscle force is generated by myosin crossbridges interacting with actin. As estimated from stiffness1,2 and equatorial X-ray diffraction3 of muscle and muscle fibres, most myosin crossbridges are attached to actin during isometric contraction, but a much smaller fraction is bound stereospecifically4,5,6,7. To determine the fraction of crossbridges contributing to tension and the structural changes that attached crossbridges undergo when generating force, we monitored the X-ray diffraction pattern during temperature-induced tension rise in fully activated permeabilized frog muscle fibres. Temperature jumps8 from 5–6 °C to 16–19 °C initiated a 1.7-fold increase in tension without significantly changing fibre stiffness or the intensities of the (1,1) equatorial and (14.5 nm)−1 meridional X-ray reflections. However, tension rise was accompanied by a 20% decrease in the intensity of the (1,0) equatorial reflection and an increase in the intensity of the first actin layer line by ∼13% of that in rigor. Our results show that muscle force is associated with a transition of the crossbridges from a state in which they are nonspecifically attached to actin to one in which stereospecifically bound myosin crossbridges label the actin helix.

Date: 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/40651 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:388:y:1997:i:6638:d:10.1038_40651

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/40651

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().