The vesicles of fragmented sarcoplasmic reticulum, i.e. the physiological relaxing factor, remove most of the exchangeable Ca bound to actomyosin and myofibrils. The extent to which they remove Ca and the extent to which they inhibit myofibrillar activity are closely correlated. Previous work has shown that those in vitro reactions of actomyosin with ATP which are equivalent to its contraction, i.e. superprecipitation and a high ATPase activity, require the formation of a Ca-actomyosin complex, and that actomyosin after the removal of most of its bound Ca is inhibited by physiological concentrations of ATP. The evidence now suggests that the factor achieves its relaxing effect through the dissociation of the Ca-actomyosin complex and that it has no other direct influence on the biological activity of actomyosin. Experiments, showing that under similar conditions the vesicles of the factor are capable of reducing the concentration of ionized Ca in the surrounding medium to about 0.02 µM and less, suggest that the factor competes successfully with actomyosin for the available Ca through its mechanism of Ca accumulation.
Article|
March 01 1963
On the Mechanism of the Relaxing Effect of Fragmented Sarcoplasmic Reticulum
Annemarie Weber,
Annemarie Weber
From the Division of Physiology, Institute for Muscle Disease, New York
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Ruth Herz,
Ruth Herz
From the Division of Physiology, Institute for Muscle Disease, New York
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Ingrid Reiss
Ingrid Reiss
From the Division of Physiology, Institute for Muscle Disease, New York
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Annemarie Weber
From the Division of Physiology, Institute for Muscle Disease, New York
Ruth Herz
From the Division of Physiology, Institute for Muscle Disease, New York
Ingrid Reiss
From the Division of Physiology, Institute for Muscle Disease, New York
Received:
August 10 1962
Online ISSN: 1540-7748
Print ISSN: 0022-1295
Copyright ©, 1963, by The Rockefeller Institute Press
1963
J Gen Physiol (1963) 46 (4): 679–702.
Article history
Received:
August 10 1962
Citation
Annemarie Weber, Ruth Herz, Ingrid Reiss; On the Mechanism of the Relaxing Effect of Fragmented Sarcoplasmic Reticulum . J Gen Physiol 1 March 1963; 46 (4): 679–702. doi: https://doi.org/10.1085/jgp.46.4.679
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