The kinetics of swelling in muscle exposed to hypertonic glycerol solution.

In frog skeleton muscle treated with glycerol, the efflux of the slow potassium fraction is four times faster than the hydration of macromolecules being a little faster than the total swelling process. The slow K fraction is assumed to exist in special salt linkages called intra- and intermolecular K bridges for describing the correlation between the solubilization of proteins and K release. Conformational change involving helix-coil transition and cooperative effects in the K release could produce together the time-lag between the efflux of slow K fraction and swelling of the muscle.