Electro-optical property of extremely stretched skinned muscle fibers

Skinned fibers of frog semitendinosus muscle could easily be stretched up to 8 mum or more in sarcomere length. Such extremely stretched fibers gave quite sharp optical diffraction patterns. The intensities of all observable diffraction lines were found to increase on application of electric field (10 similar to 100 V/cm) parallel to the fiber axis, provided that there was no overlap between thin and thick filaments. By use of a polarizing microscope, it was concluded that I-bands were mainly responsible for this intensity increase. By application of square pulses, the time course of the intensity increase and decay was followed. The analysis based on a simple model suggests: (a) Each thin filament has a permanent dipole movement and the movement directs from Z-bands to the free end of the thin filament. (b) The flexural rigidity of thin filaments is estimated to be similar to 3 with 10-17 dyn with cm-2. The present fibers will provide various applications in physiochemical studies of in vivo thin and thick filaments.