20 January 2005
In-flight movies
Insects fly by flapping their wings back and forth using tiny muscles that are the most powerful motors in the animal kingdom. These muscles exhibit an accentuated form of stretch-dependent activation, a property found to some extent in nearly all muscles. By aiming a narrow, high intensity X-ray beam at the flight muscles of tethered flying Drosophila, Dickinson et al. have measured structural changes directly in an active flight muscle. The resulting data were combined with virtual-reality flight simulation to produce X-ray movies showing the cyclic motion of the molecules that cause the muscles to contract and relax 200 times a second. These results have implications for our understanding of how all muscles, including hearts, function.
Molecular dynamics of cyclically contracting insect
flight muscle in vivo
MICHAEL DICKINSON, et al.
Nature 433, 330–334 (2005);
doi:10.1038/nature03230
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