Abstract
Electron micrographs showing different cross-bridge orientations in different states of muscle fibres, and X-ray diffraction patterns indicating axial cross-bridge disorder in contracting muscle first suggested that force generation in the contracting muscle involved a change in orientation of the myosin heads that form cross-bridges between thick and thin filaments1,2. This has been supported by subsequent work; the myosin molecule has the required flexibility for changes in orientation3,4. The orientation of muscle tryptophans and of probes attached to the myosin heads of permeable muscle fibres depends on the state of the muscle5–9. Recently, fluorescence polarization fluctuations and time-resolved X-ray diffraction patterns have suggested that cross-bridges of a contracting muscle can rotate10,11. We have used electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy to monitor the orientation of spin labels attached specifically to a reactive sulphydryl on the myosin heads in glycerinated rabbit psoas skeletal muscle. Previously, it has been shown that the paramagnetic probes are highly ordered in rigor muscle, with a nearly random angular distribution in relaxed muscle12. We show here that during the generation of isometric tension, ∼80% of the probes display a random angular distribution as in relaxed muscle while the remaining 20% are highly oriented at the same angle as found in rigor muscle. These findings indicate that a domain of the myosin head does not change orientation during the power stroke of the contractile interaction.
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Cooke, R., Crowder, M. & Thomas, D. Orientation of spin labels attached to cross-bridges in contracting muscle fibres. Nature 300, 776–778 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1038/300776a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/300776a0
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