Muscles as Molecular and Metabolic Machines

This work explores muscles as a model of molecular and metabolic machines, in which all structures and functions are exquisitely integrated and matched to each other. The analysis begins with a standard reductionist approach, reviewing the integrated machine parts. The key working components of the complete muscle machine are proteins (soluble, organelle or membrane localized), and a conservative count indicates that more than 100 such machine parts are currently known, essentially all occurring as cell-specific isoforms. Random assortment of these machine parts or protein isoforms would generate a vast number of "muscle machines" and muscle fibre types. This book presents evidence to suggest that the more specialized the muscle type then typically only one fibre type is found, and that only specific and often unique combinations of isoforms and machine parts can work in an appropriate fashion.