Becker's World of the Cell 9th Edition by Lewis Kleinsmith, Jeff Hardin, Gregory Paul Bertoni

Exercise 3

Muscle Structure. Frog skeletal muscle consists of thick filaments that are about 1.6 µ m long and thin filaments about 1 µ m long.
(a)What is the length of the A band and the I band in a muscle with a sarcomere length of 3.2 µ m Describe what happens to the length of both bands as the sarcomere length decreases during contraction from 3.2 to 2.0 µ m.
(b)The H zone is a specific portion of the A band. If the H zone of each A band decreases in length from 1.2 to 0 µ m as the sarcomere length contracts from 3.2 to 2.0 µ m, what can you deduce about the physical meaning of the H zone
(c)What can you say about the distance from the Z line to the edge of the H zone during contraction