Myosin Filament
What happens to me during a contraction of the muscle?
What is Myosin? And what do i do during a contraction?
First of all myosin is a chemical that is in the muscles and it works with another chemical called actin. This is going to be happening in the muscle or what is called a sarcomere which is basically one unit of muscle. The actin is in the middle of the muscle, and the myosin is attached to the sides of the muscles so it can't move. This is when the muscle is relaxed. The myosin is always grabbing at the actin with the myosin heads, and they to try and attach to it but it can't unless we have ATP present. Then the myosin heads will start being able to attach to the actin, but we also need calcium for this as well. The calcium helps the myosin get through the "block" of the actin. This also makes what is called tropomyosin, which is the combination of the myosin and troponin come together during the muscle contraction. So what is basically happening is that the actin is sliding past the myosin. When this happens we have what are called Z disks in our muscles and when the actin starts to slide past the myosin the z disks move closer and closer together and now the muscle is contracted.