Molecular dynamics of cyclically contracting insect flight muscle in vivo

Michael Dickinson, Gerrie Farman, Mark Frye, Tanya Bekyarova, David Gore, David Maughan and Thomas Irving ()
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Michael Dickinson: California Institute of Technology
Gerrie Farman: Illinois Institute of Technology
Mark Frye: California Institute of Technology
Tanya Bekyarova: Illinois Institute of Technology
David Gore: Illinois Institute of Technology
David Maughan: University of Vermont
Thomas Irving: Illinois Institute of Technology

Nature, 2005, vol. 433, issue 7023, 330-334

Abstract: In-flight movies Insects fly by flapping their wings back and forth using tiny muscles that are the most powerful motors in the animal kingdom. These muscles exhibit an accentuated form of stretch-dependent activation, a property found to some extent in nearly all muscles. By aiming a narrow, high intensity X-ray beam at the flight muscles of tethered flying Drosophila, Dickinson et al. have measured structural changes directly in an active flight muscle. The resulting data were combined with virtual-reality flight simulation to produce X-ray movies showing the cyclic motion of the molecules that cause the muscles to contract and relax 200 times a second. These results have implications for our understanding of how all muscles, including hearts, function.

Date: 2005
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DOI: 10.1038/nature03230

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