Body size and the neural control of movement

Does the nebulin ruler hypothesis stand up to experimental tests? Nebulin’s possible role as a ruler has been tested in several ways, and thus far the results appear to argue against its controlling thin filament length. Two such pieces of evidence are: first, the nebulin molecule appears to be somewhat shorter than the thin filament in most fibre types; and second, in nebulin gene knockout models, the thin filaments are generally shorter and remain relatively uniform. These last data might seem to indicate that nebulin’s role is to ensure that the filaments will grow to a defined length and will be stable at this length, rather than that they will not grow beyond a defined length.