Scientists have produced the first high-resolution 3D image of the sarcomere, the basic contractile unit of skeletal and heart muscle cells, using electron cryo-tomography (cryo-ET). The international ...

Setting out to identify all proteins that make up the sarcomere, the basic contractile unit of muscle cells, resulted in an unexpected revelation, providing experimental evidence that helps explain a ...

The human heart, often described as the body's engine, is a remarkable organ that tirelessly beats to keep us alive. At the core of this vital organ, intricate processes occur when it contracts, where ...

When a muscle contracts, the parts of a sarcomere "shorten" and come closer together. Each cardiac muscle cell can have over 5,000 sarcomeres, which compounds both the shortening and relaxation events ...

A human heart might contract some three billion times over a lifetime, and each one of those contractions is driven by a protein called myosin. One of three classes of so-called motor proteins in our ...

Atrial fibrillation, heart failure and stroke – hypertrophic cardiomyopathy can lead to many serious health conditions and is a major cause of sudden cardiac death in people younger than 35. „The ...