FIGURE 9.

Desmin plays a role in passive stress bearing. Plots of (A) Cauchy stress (inset, LaGrangian stress) and (B) radial strain versus sarcomere length for wild-type fibers (pink, 25 experiments on 11 fibers), stiff desmin-null fibers (green, 13 experiments on nine fibers), and compliant desmin-null fibers (blue, 12 experiments on eight fibers). Divergence of stress-SL curves for wild-type or stiff knockout fibers and compliant knockout fibers occur at ∼3.5–3.8 μm. Different symbols of the same color represent different experiments.