Fig. 9.

Simulation results using the mathematical model to test the role of myosin filament length distribution on force maintenance in sustained contraction. Here we mimicked the experimental protocol both for a standard filament length distribution (solid line), and an altered distribution with a greater fraction of shorter filaments (dashed line) to observe the alteration in force maintained during the oscillation protocol (see materials and methods). The favorable agreement with the experimental data (c.f. Fig. 3) suggests that changes to the filament length distribution may play an important role in regulating this force response.