It has been accepted for half a century that, for a given level of activation, the steady-state isometric force of a muscle sarcomere depends exclusively on the amount of overlap between the contractile filaments actin and myosin, or equivalently sarcomere length (Gordon AM et al., J Physiol 184: 170–192, 1966). Moreover, according to the generally accepted paradigm of muscle contraction, the cross-bridge theory (Huxley AF, Prog Biophys Biophys Chem 7: 255–318, 1957), this steady-state isometric sarcomere force is independent of the muscle's contractile history (Huxley AF, Prog Biophys Biophys Chem 7: 255–318, 1957; Walcott S and Herzog W, Math Biosci 216: 172–186, 2008); i.e., it is independent of whether a muscle is held at a constant length before and during the contraction or whether the muscle is shortened or lengthened to the same constant length. This, however, is not the case, as muscles and single fibers that are stretched show greatly increased steady-state isometric forces compared with preparations that are held at a constant length (Abbott BC and Aubert XM, J Physiol 117: 77–86, 1952; De Ruiter CJ et al., J Physiol 526.3: 671–681, 2000; Edman KAP et al., J Physiol 281: 139–155, 1978; Edman KAP et al., J Gen Physiol 80: 769–784, 1982; Edman KAP and Tsuchiya T, J Physiol 490.1: 191–205, 1996). This so-called “residual force enhancement” (Edman KAP et al., J Gen Physiol 80: 769–784, 1982) offers a perplexing puzzle for muscle physiologists. Many theories have been advanced to address the discrepancy between prediction and observation with the most popular and accepted being the sarcomere length nonuniformity theory (Morgan DL, Biophys J 57: 209–221, 1990), which explains the residual force enhancement with the development of large nonuniformities in sarcomere lengths during muscle stretching. Here, we performed experiments in mechanically isolated sarcomeres and observed that the residual force enhancement following active stretching is preserved. Since our preparation utilizes a single sarcomere, a redistribution of the length of neighboring sarcomeres to produce the higher force following stretch is, by design, precluded. Furthermore, the enhanced forces in the single sarcomeres always exceed the isometric forces on the plateau of the force-length relationship, thereby eliminating the possibility that our result might have been obtained because of a redistribution of half-sarcomere lengths. Since force enhancement in single myofibrils has been associated with actin-titin interactions (Kulke M et al., Circ Res 89: 874–881, 2001; Li Q et al., Biophys J 69: 1508–1518, 1995) and calcium binding to titin (Joumaa V et al., Am J Physiol Cell Physiol 294: C74–C78, 2008; Labeit D et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 100: 13716–13721, 2003), titin may regulate the sarcomeric force enhancement observed here.
Force enhancement after stretch of isolated myofibrils is increased by sarcomere length non-uniformities