Muscle contraction thermal activation

The phenomena that drive muscle contraction—thermal activation, pH activation, calcium ion activation, stretch activation in insect flight muscle, and dephosphorylation itself—have all been shown to drive contraction by hydrophobic association in the elastic-contractile model proteins discussed in Chapter 5. As concerns a pair of hydrophobic domains, all of these processes surmount the T,-divide (the cusp of insolubility in Figure 7.1) to go from a soluble state to an insoluble state either by raising the... 

In the body, the energy derived from food is released as body heat and also used in the synthesis of ATP. The energy captured in ATP is then transformed into other forms, i.e., chemical (synthesis of new compounds), mechanical (muscle contraction), electrical (nerve activity), electrochemical (various ion pumps), thermal (maintenance of body temperature), and informational (base sequences in nucleic acids, amino acids in proteins). In general, the energy of food provides for the specific dynamic action of food, the maintenance of the body s basal metabolism, and the energy expenditure associated with various types of activity. 

Raising the temperature to drive contraction by hydrophobic association is the fundamental property of the consilient mechanism as demonstrated in Chapter 5 by means of designed elastic-contractile model proteins. Thermal activation of muscle contraction also correlates with contraction by hydrophobic association, but assisted in this case by the thermal instability of phosphoanhydride bonds associated with ATP, which on breakdown most dramatically drive hydrophobic association. In particular, both muscle and cross-linked elastic protein-based polymer, (GVGVP) contract on raising... 

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