Functionality of disorder in muscle mechanics

Abstract

A salient feature of skeletal muscles is their ability to take up an applied slack in a microsecond timescale. Behind this remarkably fast adaptation is a collective folding in a bundle of elastically interacting bistable elements. Since this interaction has long-range character, the behavior of the system in force and length controlled ensembles is different; in particular, it can have two distinct order-disorder--type critical points. We show that the account of the disregistry between myosin and actin filaments places the elementary force-producing units of skeletal muscles close to both such critical points. The ensuing "double-criticality" contributes to the system's ability to perform robustly and suggests that the disregistry is functional.