Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Bringing muscles into focus; the first two millennia
- 2 Muscle metabolism after the Chemical Revolution; lactic acid takes the stage
- 3 The relationship between mechanical events, heat production and metabolism; studies between 1840 and 1930
- 4 The influence of brewing science on the study of muscle glycolysis; adenylic acid and the ammonia controversy
- 5 The discovery of phosphagen and adenosinetriphosphate; contraction without lactic acid
- 6 Adenosinetriphosphate as fuel and as phosphate-carrier
- 7 Early studies of muscle structure and theories of contraction, 1870–1939
- 8 Interaction of actomyosin and ATP
- 9 Some theories of contraction mechanism, 1939 to 1956
- 10 On myosin, actin and tropomyosin
- 11 The sliding mechanism
- 12 How does the sliding mechanism work?
- 13 Excitation, excitation-contraction coupling and relaxation
- 14 Happenings in intact muscle: the challenge of adenosinetriphosphate breakdown
- 15 Rigor and the chemical changes responsible for its onset
- 16 Respiration
- 17 Oxidative phosphorylation
- 18 The regulation of carbohydrate metabolism for energy supply to the muscle machine
- 19 A comparative study of the striated muscle of vertebrates
- 20 Enzymic and other effects of denervation, cross-innervation and repeated stimulation
- 21 Some aspects of muscle disease
- 22 Contraction in muscles of invertebrates
- 23 Vertebrate smooth muscle
- 24 Energy provision and contractile proteins in non-muscular functions
- The perspective surveyed
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
14 - Happenings in intact muscle: the challenge of adenosinetriphosphate breakdown
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Bringing muscles into focus; the first two millennia
- 2 Muscle metabolism after the Chemical Revolution; lactic acid takes the stage
- 3 The relationship between mechanical events, heat production and metabolism; studies between 1840 and 1930
- 4 The influence of brewing science on the study of muscle glycolysis; adenylic acid and the ammonia controversy
- 5 The discovery of phosphagen and adenosinetriphosphate; contraction without lactic acid
- 6 Adenosinetriphosphate as fuel and as phosphate-carrier
- 7 Early studies of muscle structure and theories of contraction, 1870–1939
- 8 Interaction of actomyosin and ATP
- 9 Some theories of contraction mechanism, 1939 to 1956
- 10 On myosin, actin and tropomyosin
- 11 The sliding mechanism
- 12 How does the sliding mechanism work?
- 13 Excitation, excitation-contraction coupling and relaxation
- 14 Happenings in intact muscle: the challenge of adenosinetriphosphate breakdown
- 15 Rigor and the chemical changes responsible for its onset
- 16 Respiration
- 17 Oxidative phosphorylation
- 18 The regulation of carbohydrate metabolism for energy supply to the muscle machine
- 19 A comparative study of the striated muscle of vertebrates
- 20 Enzymic and other effects of denervation, cross-innervation and repeated stimulation
- 21 Some aspects of muscle disease
- 22 Contraction in muscles of invertebrates
- 23 Vertebrate smooth muscle
- 24 Energy provision and contractile proteins in non-muscular functions
- The perspective surveyed
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
We have already discussed Lundsgaard's realisation in 1934 that phosphocreatine breakdown must be considered a recovery process, leading to the restitution of some unknown energy-rich substance. The evidence from his experiments on whole muscle seemed to rule out ATP as this substance, since ATP breakdown was observed only after stimulation to exhaustion, just before rigor supervened. Lohmann's experiments a little later on muscle extracts, however, bore the clear implication that ATP breakdown must precede phosphocreatine breakdown. The idea of ATP hydrolysis as the energy-yielding reaction closest to the muscle machine was greatly strengthened by Engelhardt & Lyubimova's discovery of the ATPase activity of myosin and the subsequent work on interactions in vitro of ATP and actomyosin gels. Since no decrease in ATP content of normally contracting, unexhausted muscle was observed, the confident assumption was generally made that resynthesis of the ATP used was too rapid to permit of measurement of its hydrolysis. This attitude was too complacent for although the assumption turned out to be right in the end, its rigorous proof was attended by extreme difficulties.
We shall consider first in this chapter the various ways and means which experimenters tried hoping to get light on the chemical reactions accompanying contraction, and the evidence which came out of such work for ATP dephosphorylation during a short series of twitches or a short tetanus.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Machina CarnisThe Biochemistry of Muscular Contraction in its Historical Development, pp. 339 - 366Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1971