Measurement of Skeletal Muscle Fiber Contractility with High-Speed Traction Microscopy.

ABSTRACT: We describe a technique for simultaneous quantification of the contractile forces and cytosolic calcium dynamics of muscle fibers embedded in three-dimensional biopolymer gels under auxotonic loading conditions. We derive a scaling law for linear elastic matrices such as basement membrane extract hydrogels (Matrigel) that allows us to measure contractile force from the shape of the relaxed and contracted muscle cell and the Young's modulus of the matrix without further knowledge of the matrix deformations surrounding the cell and without performing computationally intensive inverse force reconstruction algorithms. We apply our method to isolated mouse flexor digitorum brevis (FDB) fibers that are embedded in 10 mg/mL Matrigel. Upon electrical stimulation, individual FDB fibers show twitch

SUBMITTER: Rausch M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7002922 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature