ArticleBiophysical journal2016
A Beetle Flight Muscle Displays Leg Muscle Microstructure.
Article in Biophysical journal, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- BeetleBot: An integrated bioinspired soft robot for multimodal sensing and adaptive interaction.Science advances · 2026Article
- The effect of muscle ultrastructure on the force, displacement and work capacity of skeletal muscle.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- A biomechanical model for the relation between bite force and mandibular opening angle in arthropods.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Mice with R2509C-RYR1 mutation exhibit dysfunctional Ca2+ dynamics in primary skeletal myocytes.The Journal of general physiology · 2022Article
- Relaxed tarantula skeletal muscle has two ATP energy-saving mechanisms.The Journal of general physiology · 2021Article
- Nanometer-scale structure differences in the myofilament lattice spacing of two cockroach leg muscles correspond to their different functions.The Journal of experimental biology · 2020Article
- The tymbal muscle of cicada has flight muscle-type sarcomeric architecture and protein expression.Zoological letters · 2017Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In contrast to major flight muscles in the Mecynorrhina torquata beetle, the third axillary (3Ax) muscle is a minor flight muscle that uniquely displays a powerful mechanical function despite its considerably small volume, ∼1/50 that of a major flight muscle. The 3Ax muscle contracts relatively slowly, and in flight strongly pulls the beating wing to attenuate the stroke amplitude. This attenuation leads to left-right turning in flight or wing folding to cease flying. What enables this small muscle to be so powerful? To explore this question, we examined the microstructure of the 3Ax muscle using synchrotron x-ray diffraction, optical microscopy, and immunoblotting analysis. We found that the 3Ax muscle has long (∼5 μm) myofilaments and that the ratio of thick (myosin) filaments to thin (actin) filaments is 1:5 or 1:6. These characteristics are not observed in the major flight muscles, which have shorter myofilaments (∼3.5 μm) with a smaller ratio (1:3), and instead are more typical of a leg muscle. Furthermore, the flight-muscle-specific troponin isoform, TnH, is not expressed in the 3Ax muscle. Since such a microstructure is suitable for generating large tension, the 3Ax muscle is appropriately designed to pull the wing strongly despite its small volume.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.