myofilament
Sign in to saveAlso known as striated muscle filament, GO:0036379
Myofilaments are the three protein filaments of myofibrils in muscle cells. The main proteins involved are myosin, actin, and titin. Myosin and actin are the contractile proteins and titin is an elastic protein. The myofilaments act together in muscle contraction, and in order of size are a thick one of mostly myosin, a thin one of mostly actin, and a very thin one of mostly titin.
Key facts
- Microanatomy.Name
- Myofilament
- Microanatomy.Latin
- myofilamentum
- Microanatomy.Image
- Myofilament.svg
- Microanatomy.Caption
- Myofilament
- Microanatomy.PartOf
- Myofibril
via Wikipedia infobox
~9 min read
Encyclopedic overview
8 sectionsContents
- Structure
- Function
- Muscle fiber contraction
- Muscle fiber relaxation
- Response to exercise
- Research
- References
- External links
Myofilaments are the three protein filaments of myofibrils in muscle cells. The main proteins involved are myosin, actin, and titin. Myosin and actin are the contractile proteins and titin is an elastic protein. The myofilaments act together in muscle contraction, and in order of size are a thick one of mostly myosin, a thin one of mostly actin, and a very thin one of mostly titin.
Types of muscle tissue are striated skeletal muscle and cardiac muscle, obliquely striated muscle (found in some invertebrates), and non-striated smooth muscle. Various arrangements of myofilaments create different muscles. Striated muscle has transverse bands of filaments. In obliquely striated muscle, the filaments are staggered. Smooth muscle has irregular arrangements of filaments.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “myofilament” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.