When a Skeletal Muscle Fibre Contracts What Happens in the Sarcomere

The ideal length of a sarcomere during maximum tension generation occurs when the thick and thin filaments overlap the most. If a dormant sarcoma is stretched beyond an ideal resting length, the thick, thin filaments do not overlap to the highest degree, and fewer bridges can form. This results in fewer myosin heads pulling on the actin and less tension generated. When a sarcomere is shortened, the overlap zone is reduced because the thin filaments reach the H zone, which consists of myosin tails. Since it is the myosin heads that form transverse bridges, actin does not bind to myosin in this area and reduces the tension generated by this myofiber. When the sarcomere is shortened, the thin filaments begin to overlap even more, which further reduces the formation of cross bridges and creates even less tension. Conversely, when the sarcomere is stretched to the point where the thick and thin filaments do not overlap at all, no transverse bridge is formed and no tension is created. This amount of stretching usually does not occur because accessory proteins, internal sensory nerves, and connective tissue stand in the way of extreme stretching. Fig.

1. Schematic view of a sarcomere. The figure shows the schematic locations of tropomodulin, leiomodin and myosin-binding protein C (MyBP-C). The location displays two presumed Link Modes of MyBP-C. ACh is broken down into acetyl and choline by the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE). AChE is located in the synaptic cleft and breaks down ACh so that it does not remain bound to ACh receptors, which would lead to prolonged unwanted muscle contraction (Figure 6.9). The protein components and architecture of sarcoma have been extensively studied, and the interested reader will be directed to a review by Henderson et al.2 for more complete information on the subject. We mainly focus on the functionalities of intrinsically disordered regions (IDR) in two groups of muscle proteins important in the context of sarcomer structure and surgery (Fig.

1). A protein group comprising skeletal and cardiac isoforms of myosin-binding protein C (MyBP-C) is thought to have a regulatory role in sarcomer contraction.2–4 Another protein group consists of several isoforms of the tropomodulin/leiomoldin homology family, and is known to regulate the formation of thin filaments.2,5–7 The two groups represent two different but highly related aspects of sarcomer function. namely, its structure and how this structure allows normal (or abnormal, although in case of illness) muscle performance in a constantly changing environment. Watch this video animation of the muscle contraction of the sacred bridge. (a) Z-pipes. (b) sarcomas. c) This is the arrangement of actin and myosin filaments in a sarcoma. (d) Alternating strands of actin and myosin filaments. A sarcoma is the functional unit (contractile unit) of a muscle fiber. As shown in Figure 2-5, each sarcoma contains two types of myofilaments: thick filaments, which consist mainly of the contractile protein myosin, and thin filaments, which consist mainly of the contractile actin protein. Thin filaments also contain the regulatory proteins troponin and tropomyosin. When myofilaments are seen under an electron microscope, their arrangement gives the appearance of alternating bands of light and dark bands.

The light strips are called I bands and contain only thin filaments. Dark bands are called A-bands and contain thick, thin filaments, with thick filaments encompassing the entire length of the A-band. Thus, the length of the thick filament determines the length of the A-band. Each skeletal muscle fiber is supplied by a motor neuron to the NMJ. Watch this video to learn more about what happens at the neuromuscular connection. (a) What is the definition of a motor unit? (b) What is the structural and functional difference between a large motor unit and a small motor unit? Can you give an example for everyone? (c) Why is the neurotransmitter acetylcholine broken down after binding to its receptor? Lorand, L. “Adenosine triphosphate creatine transphosphorylase” as a relaxing muscle factor. Nature 172, 1181–1183 (1953) doi:10.1038/1721181a0.

Figure 3-10. Sliding filament model of muscle contraction. Muscle contraction occurs by sliding the myofilaments relative to each other into the sarcoma. A: In relaxed muscles, thin filaments do not completely overlap with thick myosin filaments, and there is a prominent I-band. B: During contraction, a movement of the thin filaments towards the center of the sarcomaer occurs, and as the thin filaments are anchored to the Z disks, their movement leads to a shortening of the sarcomor. The sliding of thin filaments is facilitated by contact with the spherical head domains of myosin-thick bipolar filaments. miRNA-208a controls not only the expression of β-CMH in the heart, but also that of the closely related slow myosin isoform Myh7b (van Rooij et al., 2009). The genes β-CMH and Myh7b encode intronic miRNAs, miRNA-208b and miRNA-499, respectively (Berezikov et al., 2006; Landgraf et al., 2007). Mice lacking the miRNA-208b or miRNA-499 gene have no obvious developmental defects (van Rooij et al., 2009). However, miRNA-208b/-499 double zero mutated mice exhibit reduced expression of slow myofiber β-MHC and increased expression of fast-type myosin isoforms.

In contrast, overexpression of miRNA-499 leads to increased expression of β-MHC and leads muscles to a slow myofiber phenotype. Forced expression of cardiac miRNA-499 promotes hypertrophy in mice (Shieh et al., 2011; Matkovich et al., 2012). Together, these miRNAs are important for specifying muscle fiber identity by stimulating the slow programs of the myofiber gene at the expense of those controlling the rapid expression of the myoffiber gene (Hodgkinson et al., 2015). .