• Question: What is your opinion on "Huxley's sliding filament theory"?

    Asked by mohan_bains to Dan on 9 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Dan Gordon

      Dan Gordon answered on 9 Nov 2016:

      This is such a great question. Huxley was certainly partly right about this. In that seminal study they showed how a muscle changes length and how the amount of force produced was proportional to the degree of interaction and hence overlap between the actin and myosin filaments of the muscle. However what was not understood in this model is what happens when the muscle is under tension and how the filaments can slide pass each other. This where titin comes into action. This connect the Z-disc of each filament to the myosin chain. So enables there to be tension in the muscle. SO they were pretty close to having this right.

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