In 2023, Tigist Assefa of Ethiopia set a new record with a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes, and 53 seconds. Scientists, trainers, and athletes alike have wondered about the extent to which muscle structure and function contribute to success in athletes such as Assefa. What makes elite distance runners so good? Are their muscles somehow different from those of less successful athletes and non-athletes? Predict who would likely have a greater proportion of fast glycolytic fibers in their gastrocnemius (calf) muscle—an elite distance runner or an elite sprinter. Explain.

How did data on sarcomere structure inspire the sliding-filament model of muscle contraction?

Explain why the observation that muscle cells contain many mitochondria and extensive smooth endoplasmic reticulum turned out to be logical once the molecular mechanism of muscular contraction was understood.

Rigor mortis is the stiffening of a body after death that occurs when myosin binds to actin but cannot unbind. What prevents myosin from unbinding?

In 2023, Tigist Assefa of Ethiopia set a new record with a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes, and 53 seconds. Scientists, trainers, and athletes alike have wondered about the extent to which muscle structure and function contribute to success in athletes such as Assefa. What makes elite distance runners so good? Are their muscles somehow different from those of less successful athletes and non-athletes? Compare and contrast the structure and function of the three types of skeletal muscle fibers.

In 2023, Tigist Assefa of Ethiopia set a new record with a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes, and 53 seconds. Scientists, trainers, and athletes alike have wondered about the extent to which muscle structure and function contribute to success in athletes such as Assefa. What makes elite distance runners so good? Are their muscles somehow different from those of less successful athletes and non-athletes? Predict the effect of training for a marathon on the number of muscle cells in the gastrocnemius. Explain.

In 2023, Tigist Assefa of Ethiopia set a new record with a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes, and 53 seconds. Scientists, trainers, and athletes alike have wondered about the extent to which muscle structure and function contribute to success in athletes such as Assefa. What makes elite distance runners so good? Are their muscles somehow different from those of less successful athletes and non-athletes? To discover the relationship between muscle-fiber types and performance, researchers obtained tiny biopsies of the gastrocnemius of 14 elite distance runners, 18 trained but non-elite distance runners, and 19 untrained subjects. They categorized the fiber types as slow or fast. (At the time of the study, intermediate fibers had not been identified as a third type.) Some of their data are shown here (* means 𝑃<0.05; BioSkills 3). What conclusions can you draw from these data?

In 2023, Tigist Assefa of Ethiopia set a new record with a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes, and 53 seconds. Scientists, trainers, and athletes alike have wondered about the extent to which muscle structure and function contribute to success in athletes such as Assefa. What makes elite distance runners so good? Are their muscles somehow different from those of less successful athletes and non-athletes? The researchers looked more closely at the data within the group of elite runners. Although the mean proportion of slow fibers was 79 percent in this group, individual values ranged from 27 percent in one runner to 98 percent in another. How does this finding affect your interpretation of the relationship between athletic performance and muscle-fiber types?