Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Bringing muscles into focus; the first two millennia
- 2 Muscle metabolism after the Chemical Revolution; lactic acid takes the stage
- 3 The relationship between mechanical events, heat production and metabolism; studies between 1840 and 1930
- 4 The influence of brewing science on the study of muscle glycolysis; adenylic acid and the ammonia controversy
- 5 The discovery of phosphagen and adenosinetriphosphate; contraction without lactic acid
- 6 Adenosinetriphosphate as fuel and as phosphate-carrier
- 7 Early studies of muscle structure and theories of contraction, 1870–1939
- 8 Interaction of actomyosin and ATP
- 9 Some theories of contraction mechanism, 1939 to 1956
- 10 On myosin, actin and tropomyosin
- 11 The sliding mechanism
- 12 How does the sliding mechanism work?
- 13 Excitation, excitation-contraction coupling and relaxation
- 14 Happenings in intact muscle: the challenge of adenosinetriphosphate breakdown
- 15 Rigor and the chemical changes responsible for its onset
- 16 Respiration
- 17 Oxidative phosphorylation
- 18 The regulation of carbohydrate metabolism for energy supply to the muscle machine
- 19 A comparative study of the striated muscle of vertebrates
- 20 Enzymic and other effects of denervation, cross-innervation and repeated stimulation
- 21 Some aspects of muscle disease
- 22 Contraction in muscles of invertebrates
- 23 Vertebrate smooth muscle
- 24 Energy provision and contractile proteins in non-muscular functions
- The perspective surveyed
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
11 - The sliding mechanism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Bringing muscles into focus; the first two millennia
- 2 Muscle metabolism after the Chemical Revolution; lactic acid takes the stage
- 3 The relationship between mechanical events, heat production and metabolism; studies between 1840 and 1930
- 4 The influence of brewing science on the study of muscle glycolysis; adenylic acid and the ammonia controversy
- 5 The discovery of phosphagen and adenosinetriphosphate; contraction without lactic acid
- 6 Adenosinetriphosphate as fuel and as phosphate-carrier
- 7 Early studies of muscle structure and theories of contraction, 1870–1939
- 8 Interaction of actomyosin and ATP
- 9 Some theories of contraction mechanism, 1939 to 1956
- 10 On myosin, actin and tropomyosin
- 11 The sliding mechanism
- 12 How does the sliding mechanism work?
- 13 Excitation, excitation-contraction coupling and relaxation
- 14 Happenings in intact muscle: the challenge of adenosinetriphosphate breakdown
- 15 Rigor and the chemical changes responsible for its onset
- 16 Respiration
- 17 Oxidative phosphorylation
- 18 The regulation of carbohydrate metabolism for energy supply to the muscle machine
- 19 A comparative study of the striated muscle of vertebrates
- 20 Enzymic and other effects of denervation, cross-innervation and repeated stimulation
- 21 Some aspects of muscle disease
- 22 Contraction in muscles of invertebrates
- 23 Vertebrate smooth muscle
- 24 Energy provision and contractile proteins in non-muscular functions
- The perspective surveyed
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
DISCOVERY OF THE SLIDING MECHANISM
The first hints of the sliding-filament mechanism of contraction were given by the low-angle X-ray diffraction patterns obtained by H. E. Huxley with living and glycerol-extracted muscle. As we have seen, high-angle X-ray diffraction patterns had not differentiated between resting and contracted muscle; on several occasions the need for the low-angle technique had been emphasised, but before 1953 this had been used only on dried material, as in the work of Astbury (quoted by MacArthur (1)) in 1943 and of Bear in 1945. H. E. Huxley (2) began in 1951 by showing with dried muscle that stretching by 60 % had no effect on the repeat pattern found by Bear (of which the largest spacing was about 58 Å); he surmised that if the structure producing this pattern existed in living muscle and if this structure were affected by stretching, then the effect could not be on the 58 Å units themselves but must consist in the pulling apart of the long molecules containing these units. Equipped with newly designed apparatus Huxley (3) went on to study the effect of stretch in living rabbit and frog muscle. Here the axial pattern at very low angles showed reflections corresponding to orders of a 420 Å repeat pattern, of which previous workers had seen only the reflections at 50–60 Å.
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- Information
- Machina CarnisThe Biochemistry of Muscular Contraction in its Historical Development, pp. 237 - 262Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1971