How molecular motors work in muscle

Joe Howard ()
Additional contact information
Joe Howard: University of Washington

Nature, 1998, vol. 391, issue 6664, 239-240

Abstract: Abstract Howard replies — Huxley points out that there is a discrepancy between recent mechanical recordings from single myosin molecules in vitro and earlier mechanical measurements from muscle fibres in vivo: the single-molecule recordings indicate a working distance and maximum duty ratio of 4-6 nm and 10-20%, respectively, only about half the values deduced from the fibrestudies. Although it is possible that technical limitations, for example misorientated heads, make the single-molecule recordings suspect, I argued in my ReviewArticle1 that the discrepancy might be only an apparent one. In particular, the smaller working distance does conform to many of the results from muscle, and the lower duty ratio can even provide a more satisfactory explanation for some of the experiments with muscle fibres. Huxley challenges this view by discussing three additional observations from fibres. But I believe that these too are mainly consistent with the smaller working stroke and duty ratio.

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/34569 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:391:y:1998:i:6664:d:10.1038_34569

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

DOI: 10.1038/34569

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 ().