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muscle contraction

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Also known as GO:0006936, muscular contraction, contraction

process in which force is generated within muscle tissue, resulting in a change in muscle geometry. Force generation involves a chemo-mechanical energy conversion step that is carried out by the actin/myosin complex activity

Research

244,605 papers

via PubMed

~39 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Depiction of smooth muscle contraction

Muscle contraction is the activation of tension-generating sites within muscle cells. In physiology, muscle contraction does not necessarily mean muscle shortening because muscle tension can be produced without changes in muscle length (isometric contraction), such as when holding something heavy in the same position. The termination of muscle contraction is followed by muscle relaxation, which is a return of the muscle fibers to their low tension-generating state.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “muscle contraction” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.