The myocardium

A comparison of some of the mechanical properties of cardiac with other types of muscle has been made, showing that, except for the speed of some responses, cardiac muscle is similar to other types of muscle. Furthermore, the techniques used in both living and glycerol-extracted insect fibrillar and vertebrate skeletal muscle are applicable to heart muscle, where the focus of the technique is now on cross-bridge mechanics and energetics. It is particularly encouraging to see many well known phenomena such as inactivation with shortening, stress related increases in active force, and the Fenn effect begin to find some more specific relation to cross-bridge mechanical and chemical activity. The high compliance of cardiac preparations still clouds the interpretation of data obtained from whole muscle preparations; however, the reduced compliance of glycerol-extracted cardiac muscle offers some hope of obviating some series compliance. Indeed, the correspondence in mechanical responses of living and glycerol-extracted preparations shows that glycerol preparations are of great utility since the time dependence of activation also can be removed in these studies. A more complete analysis of muscle models, in which the cross-bridge contribution to muscle elasticity is more realistically evaluated, should help in relating muscle measurements to cross-bridge activity. Furthermore, studies on both living and glycerol-extracted cardiac muscle, particularly if sarcomere length can be controlled, offer new hope of closing the perpetual gap in our understanding of cardiac muscle physiology relative to skeletal muscle.