Observation of Brillouin scattering from single muscle fibres

The propagation of sound waves along relaxed single fibres of glycerinated rabbit psoas muscle has been observed using Brillouin scattering at frequencies up to 1.6 GHz. Two types of waves were observed: one with a velocity of 1508 +/- 7 m s-1, which is attributed to sound waves in intra-cellular saline, the other with a velocity of 912 +/- 25 m s-1, which is attributed to waves propagating along the protein filaments within individual sarcomeres. The latter sound velocity is much higher than that which has been reported by Stienen and Blangé (1985) for 50 microseconds tension transients, and the difference is attributed to the much higher stiffness of the protein filaments compared to the cross-bridges which determine the low-frequency elasticity of muscle fibres.