Biochemistry 4th Edition by Christopher Mathews,Kensal van Holde, Dean Appling, Spencer Anthony Cahill

Exercise 1

A typical relaxed sarcomere is about 2.3 m in length and contracts to about 2 m in length. Within the sarcomere, the thin filaments are about 1 mlong and the thick filaments are about 1.5 m long.
(a) Describe the overlap of thick and thin filaments in the relaxed and contracted sarcomere.
(b) An individual "step" by a myosin head in one cycle pulls the thin filament about 15 nm. How many steps must each actin fiber make in one contraction