Muscle Contraction

Sunday, October 9, 2022

6:07 AM
 
 Any individual muscle can only pull. The biceps contracts, pulling the arm up. But muscles can't push,
they exert force only when they contract. So to move the arm in the opposite direction, you need another
muscle on the opposite side of the joint. When the triceps contracts, it lowers the arm, while the biceps
relaxes. And vice-versa. Contraction is the key. In truth, our muscles don’t really push. Instead, some
muscles contract and some muscles relax, and they do it in just the right order to produce movement. This
explanation may seem confusing now, but this lesson will explain exactly how muscle contraction
works. Let’s move to the next page to begin learning about the biomechanics of muscle movement.
 
 
Changing the length of the muscle affects the amount of force it can produce.
What we think of as a single muscle is made up of many muscle fibers. But to understand the secret of
muscle, we have to increase the magnification even further.

No other tissue in the body has this distinctive striped appearance.

The distinctive pattern of muscle is made up of two sets of protein fibers. Here's the first set of protein
called actin, fixed at the ends and forming the vertical stripes you can see on the electron micrograph
behind. But in between the actin fibers are filaments of another thicker protein, myosin. The myosin
filaments run in between the actin fibers like a mesh.

If contraction is the key to understanding muscles, sliding is the key to understanding contraction. Watch
what happens when the muscle contracts. And then relaxes.

The filaments slide between each other during a contraction. The mesh closes up. When the muscle
relaxes, they slide back again. And just like the electron micrograph, the pattern repeats. You can see how
the contraction of the fibers shortens the full muscle.

 
The sliding filament theory is the most accepted model of muscle contraction. It was first developed by
several scientists in the 1950’s, but continued research has improved our understanding of what happens
in this process.
 
Understanding the physiology of muscle contractions may seem complex, but it is more fascinating than
it may appear. Think about some of the things you are able to do because your muscles can
contract. Muscles that shorten and relax in your fingers allow you to play video games and text on your
phone. Contracting muscles around your jaw allow you to eat American favorites like pizza and
hamburgers. If you made a list of all your favorite things to do, each one of them would be dependent on
the contracting and relaxing of your muscles.
 
If you recall, muscles are thicker in the middle at the “muscle belly,” and they attach to bone with
tendons. The tendons stretch from bone to bone across joints. Think about the movement of your
arm. Your biceps and triceps attach your humerus to your radius and ulna across your elbow joint,
allowing your arm to bend and straighten.
 
 
 
 
As the forearm is pulled up, the biceps contract and the triceps relax.
 
Structurally, you can compare your muscles to a rope. Within this rope, there are many smaller ropes
bundled together. These smaller ropes are made up of threads called muscle fascicles. These fascicles are
composed of very small threads. We call these threads muscle fibers. Recall that muscle fibers are the
cells of skeletal muscle.
 
Each muscle fiber in our body is a single cylinder-shaped cell. There are several different types of
muscles.
 
The cells of our skeletal muscles are made up of complex proteins called myofibrils. These myofibrils are
further divided into sections called sarcomeres. All of the exciting chemistry that creates muscle
movement occurs here in the sarcomere. Each muscle has thousands of these sections, and they all
contract together to produce movement. To understand what happens within each sarcomere, it is
necessary to look a little more closely. Within each sarcomere, there are layers of protein strands
called myofilaments. There are two types of myofilaments, actin and myosin.

Myosin strands have golf-club shaped objects called “heads” attached to them. They are located at the
center of a sarcomere.

Actin strands are thinner proteins and surround the thicker myosin strand in the sarcomere. The actual
number of actin strands encircling myosin depends upon the specific muscle. Larger muscles would have
more, and smaller muscles would have fewer.

 
 
 
 
 
 

 
When the muscle cell is in a resting state, the two strands are not in contact with one another. But when
your nerves send a message to your muscles, these two protein strands reach out and touch one another.
The movement that occurs gives us the name "sliding filament theory."
 
In addition to actin and myosin, your muscles also need ATP (adenine triphosphate) to provide energy to
fuel the sliding movement that occurs when the muscle contracts. It is also important to point out that
proteins can change shapes when they come into contact with charged particles called ions. When a
muscle is at rest, there are two tiny proteins called tropomyosin and troponin that are wrapped around the
actin. There are also ADP molecules stuck to each one of the myosin heads when the muscle is in a
relaxed state. It is the tropomyosin, troponin, and ADP which keep the myosin heads from extending and
attaching to the protected actin strand.
 
During periods of rest, the muscle builds up an abundance of calcium ions that will be used when it is
time for the muscle to contract. The cell gets these ions through the calcium pumps of the sarcoplasmic
reticulum (SR) which is wrapped around each sarcomere.
 
 
 
 

 
When the muscle receives a signal from the nerves around it, the signal travels down the cell's membrane
in folds called t-tubules. When the signal reaches the SR, the calcium pumps open wide and the calcium
ions begin to flow. At this point, the calcium ions bind to the troponin. This causes the troponin to change
shape and rotate around the actin which moves the tropomyosin out of the way, leaving binding sites
exposed.

 
With the binding sites open, the myosin heads extend and attach to the actin. This attachment is called
a cross-bridge. The contact causes the myosin heads to bend toward the center of the sarcomere,
shortening the overall length. We call this sarcomere shortening a muscle contraction.
 
What gets the contraction to stop? When there is no longer a nerve stimulus, the calcium ions diffuse back
inside the SR, an ATP molecule attaches to the head of the myosin, and the troponin and tropomyosin
return to their resting positions. It is the energy that is released by the ATP molecule on the myosin head
that fuels muscle relaxation.

 
Sliding Filament Theory steps (ordered):

–Calcium ions are released by sarcoplasmic reticulum into the sarcoplasm.

–The breakdown of ATP releases energy, releasing the head of the myosin.

–Calcium ions bind to troponin, exposing the binding site on the actin filament.

–The myosin head attaches to the exposed binding site on the actin filament, forming a cross-bridge.

–The flexing of the cross-bridge pulls the actin filament toward the center of the sarcomere.

–An ATP molecule in the reattaches to the ATP binding site on the myosin head.

–The myosin head is released from the actin filament’s binding site and the binding site is covered up
again.

–With the ATP molecule in place on the myosin head and calcium ions present, the cycle can continue.