MOTOR MUSCLES AS SMART SYSTEMS: COARSE IDENTIFICATION OF THE BIOCHEMICAL CONTROL ON MUSCULAR EXERCISE

Until today no biological system has been studied by more diverse approaches than the actinbased molecular motor myosin. Biophysics, biochemistry, physiology, classical genetics and molecular genetics have all made their contributions, and myosin is now becoming one of the best understood enzymes in biology. This has tremendously advanced the understanding of muscle contraction on the molecular level. Despite these achievements, the working principle of motor muscle as a biochemically controlled mechanical actuator is not yet fully understood. Adopting a complementary top-down approach, we concentrate on a coarse—yet biophysics based—model of muscular exercise, for which we pose and solve some basic identification problems. We aim at making it possible to test the predictions of our model against macroscopically available physiological data, such as muscle extension, force exerted, power expended, heart rate, oxygen consumption. When properly tuned, our coarse model would offer a wellstructured target to bottom-up efforts trying to bridge the gap between molecular machinery and physiological function.