How do muscle and tendon connections last a lifetime?
Friday, April 5, 2019 - 07:40
in Biology & Nature
Muscles are connected to tendons to power animal movements such as running, swimming or flying. Forces are produced by contractile chains of the proteins actin and myosin, which pull on muscle-tendon connections called attachments. During animal development, these muscle-tendon attachments must be established such that they resist high mechanical forces for the entire life of the animal. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Marseille (France), Munich and Münster (both Germany) has now been able to quantify the mechanical forces transmitted by a key attachment protein called Talin.