Possible Cause of Nonlinear Tension Rise in Activated Muscle Fiber during Stretching

摘要

Tension in contracting muscle fiber under conditions of ramp stretching rapidly increases, but after reaching a critical stretch P-c sharply decreases. To find out the cause of these changes in muscle fiber tension, we stopped stretching before and after reaching P-c and left the fiber stretched for 50 msec. After rapid tension drop, the transient tension rise not accompanied by fiber stiffness increase was observed only in fibers heated to 25 degrees C and stretched to P-c. Under other experimental conditions, this growth was absent. We suppose that stretch of the fiber to P-c induces transition of stereo-specifically attached myosin heads to pre-power stroke state and when the stretching is stopped, they make their step on actin and generate force. When the tension reaches P-c, all stereospecifically attached myosin heads turn out to be non-stereo-specifically, or weakly attached to actin, and are unable to make the force-generating step.