Capillary muscle.

The contraction of a muscle generates a force that decreases when increasing the contraction velocity. This "hyperbolic" force-velocity relationship has been known since the seminal work of A. V. Hill in 1938 [Hill AV (1938) Proc R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 126(843):136-195]. Hill's heuristic equation is still used, and the sliding-filament theory for the sarcomere [Huxley H, Hanson J (1954) Nature 173(4412):973-976; Huxley AF, Niedergerke R (1954) Nature 173(4412):971-973] suggested how its different parameters can be related to the molecular origin of the force generator [Huxley AF (1957) Prog Biophys Biophys Chem 7:255-318; Deshcherevskiĭ VI (1968) Biofizika 13(5):928-935]. Here, we develop a capillary analog of the sarcomere obeying Hill's equation and discuss its analogy with muscles.