Spontaneous waves in muscle fibres

Abstract

Mechanical oscillations are important for many cellular processes, e.g. the beating of cilia and flagella or the sensation of sound by hair cells. These dynamic states originate from spontaneous oscillations of molecular motors. A particularly clear example of such oscillations has been observed in muscle fibers under non-physiological conditions. In that case, motor oscillations lead to contraction waves along the fiber. By a macroscopic analysis of muscle fiber dynamics we find that the spontaneous waves involve non-hydrodynamic modes. A simple microscopic model of sarcomere dynamics highlights mechanical aspects of the motor dynamics and fits with the experimental observations.

14 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (1)

• Synchronization of active mechanical oscillators by an inertial load

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Nonequilibrium Physics in Biology
• Motility states of molecular motors engaged in a stochastic tug-of-war
• Instabilities and Oscillations in Isotropic Active Gels
• A simple self-organized swimmer driven by molecular motors
• Polarity patterns of stress fibers
• Stochastic dynamics and mechanosensitivity of myosin II minifilaments
• Spontaneous sarcomere dynamics
• The stress tensor of dilute active colloidal suspensions