Tension fluctuations in contracting myofibrils and their interpretation.

A self-consistent cycling steady-state model of contracting muscle is postulated to relate the autocorrelation functions of force fluctuations to the kinetic constants governing the operation of the cross-bridges. The fluctuations in the concentration of various intermediates in the model are due to the probabilistic nature of the transitions between states. It is shown that the decay rate of the autocorrelation of fluctuations in force is dependent on, and only on, the two rate constants governing transitions between attached states, and hence that the experimental autocorrelation functions can be used to estimate these rate constants. The model relates the time behavior of fluctuations in the concentration of any pair of enzymatic intermediates through the cross-correlation functions of fluctuations, and thus suggests a way to establish experimentally whether coupling exists between enzymatic and mechanical events during muscle contraction.