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Regulation of motor force in skeletal muscle contraction

Bin Chen (Zhejiang univ.), Huajian Gao (Brown University)

Mechanics and Physics of Biological Cells

Wed 9:00 - 10:30

Barus-Holley 141

Coordinated and synchronous actions of multiple motors take place in various biological processes, including skeletal muscle contraction, cellular mitosis, and neuronal growth, etc. though the behavior of a single motor is essentially random. Here, we investigate the chemomechanical coupling within an actin-myosin-ATP cycle and show that a “working”Myosin II possesses a unique force-stretch curve. Further study demonstrates that this unique force-stretch relation together with the stochastic behavior of actin-myosin binding causes the average number of “working” Myosin IIs to increase in linear proportion to the filament load during skeletal muscle contraction at steady state, in excellent agreement with experiment.