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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1976 Mar;73(3):813–817. doi: 10.1073/pnas.73.3.813

X-ray diffraction of actively shortening muscle.

R J Podolsky, H St Onge, L Yu, R W Lymn
PMCID: PMC336009  PMID: 1062793

Abstract

Low angle x-ray diffraction patterns were obtained from resting and activated frog sartorius muscles by means of a position-sensitive detector. Although the intensity ratio I10/I11 decreased many-fold upon activation, it was nearly the same during isometric and isotonic contraction. Thus, motion has a much smaller effect on the low order equatorial pattern than the transition from rest to activity. Analysis of the 10 and 11 reflections separately showed that I10 and I11 change reciprocally upon activation, and that they both increase by a small amount in the transition from isometric to isotonic contraction. If the intensity ratio can be taken as a measure of cross-bridge number, the results provide evidence that the drop in force in an actively shortening muscle is due primarily to the influence of motion on the configuration, rather than the number, of cross-bridges.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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