Molecular and Physiological Mechanisms of Muscle Contraction
Thoroughly researched using experimentation and re-examination of all previously published evidence, Molecular and Physiological Mechanisms of Muscle Contraction is a carefully crafted treatise and revision of previous conceptions of muscle contraction. It presents detailed descriptions of new, previously unpublished data and hybrids recent findings with the standard Huxley model.
This book demonstrates that traditional concepts cannot fully explain contraction and builds upon previous work. It identifies flaws in the reasoning initially used to explain some results as well as alternative interpretations accounting for inconsistencies. In response to previous bodies of inconsistent or conflicting theories and data, the book synthesizes research based on the Huxley model with more recent experimental and laboratory findings to define a new model.
The new model this book proposes is not a replacement for the standard Huxley model of muscle contraction, but a modification based on recent research and synthesized with pre-existing data and conceptions. It reconciles new data with prior information that is contradictory or not entirely explicable in proposing a new integrated and more complete model of muscle contraction.
Jean-Emile Morel earned his PhD in physical chemistry and a second PhD in biophysics at the Ecole Centrale Paris. He was a researcher at the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique at Saclay, France, where he focused on the complex problem of muscle contraction. He remained at Saclay from 1980 to 2004, becoming professor of bioengineering, biophysics, and cell physiology at the Ecole Centrale Paris and Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, as well as joint director of the DEA course and of the Molecular Biophysics Doctoral School of Université Pierre et Marie Curie. He also founded the Laboratory of Biology at the Ecole Centrale Paris in 1993. Since his retirement in 2004, he has devoted much of his time to reviewing the existing data on muscle contraction and trying to resolve the conundrums of the field.