Abstract
WHEN a whole striated muscle is stimulated repetitively, its contractile force decreases and it is said to be fatigued1–3. Fatigue does not occur in dystrophic muscles, and is characteristic of fast but not slow mammalian and amphibian muscle fibres4,5. The complexity of the excitation–contraction process in fast muscle fibres has made it difficult to determine when fatigue sets in. Restoration of twitch tension of fatigued fibres by caffeine6,7 suggests that fatigue is a failure of calcium release, although the depletion, during prolonged contraction, of necessary energy-rich metabolites8,9 could be responsible for fatigue. Contraction can be uncoupled from calcium release and excitation by hypertonic solutions (refs 10–12 and unpublished results of S. R. Taylor, R. Rudel and J. R. Blinks). We have now found that hypertonic uncoupling prevents fatigue, so that fatigue must be linked to contraction. We have also found that single muscle fibres can recover after being fatigued by prolonged tetanisation.
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VERGARA, J., RAPOPORT, S. Fatigue in frog single muscle fibres. Nature 252, 727–728 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1038/252727a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/252727a0
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