Small papillary muscles about 2 mm long and 0.2 mm thick were dissected from the right ventricles of 16-19 day-old rats. Resting (between twitches) and active (at twitch peaks) striation patterns were photographed in living muscles using a light microscope. External muscle length was varied from Lmax, the length at which peak twitch tension was maximum, to 0.75Lmax, the length at which peak twi...

The sliding filament and cross-bridge theories of muscle contraction provide discrete predictions of the tetanic force-length relationship of skeletal muscle that have been tested experimentally. The active force generated by a maximally activated single fiber (with sarcomere length control) is maximal when the filament overlap is optimized and is proportionally decreased when overlap is dimini...

Laser diffraction techniques coupled with simultaneous tension measurements were used to determine the length-tension relation in intact, small (0.5-mm thick, 10-mm wide, 20-25-mm long) bundles of a Limulus (horseshoe crab) striated muscle, the telson levator muscle. This muscle differs from the model vertebrate systems in that the thick filaments are not of a constant length, but shorten from ...

Active muscle shortening reduces the isometric force potential of muscle. This observation indicates that the isometric length-force characteristics are altered during muscle shortening. Post-shortening decrease in isometric force depends on starting length, shortening amplitude and shortening velocity. In the present study, post-shortening decrease in isometric force was determined after isoki...

BACKGROUND Our recent studies show that the external anal sphincter muscle (EAS) operates at a sarcomere length range which is below optimal. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that by surgically increasing sarcomere length and bringing it close to the optimal length, EAS muscle function and anal canal pressure can be enhanced. METHODS Rabbits (n = 25) were anesthetized and subjected to ...

BACKGROUND Muscular instability is an important risk factor for lumbar spine injury and chronic low-back pain. Although the lumbar multifidus muscle is considered an important paraspinal muscle, its design features are not completely understood. The purpose of the present study was to determine the architectural properties, in vivo sarcomere length operating range, and passive mechanical proper...

In this study, the malondialdehyde (MDA) levels in the muscle, liver and kidney tissues and the antioxidant vitamin (A, C, E) levels in the muscle tissue of juvenile rainbow trout were investigated under different oxygen levels (3.5 mg O2/l, 4.5 mg O2/l and 7 mg O2/l) at the end of the 8 hour trial. Fish (initial weight and length, 30.19±2.2 g and 13.15±0.22 cm, respectively) were dis...

Muscle strain injuries are some of the most frequent injuries in sports and command a great deal of attention in an effort to understand their etiology. These injuries may be the culmination of a series of subcellular events accumulated through repetitive lengthening (eccentric) contractions during exercise, and they may be influenced by a variety of variables including fiber strain magnitude, ...

Airway smooth muscle is able to adapt and maintain a nearly constant maximal force generation over a large length range. This implies that a fixed filament lattice such as that found in striated muscle may not exist in this tissue and that plastic remodeling of its contractile and cytoskeletal filaments may be involved in the process of length adaptation that optimizes contractile filament over...