3D Structure of the Sarcomere

Luther Lab, Imperial College London.

        Welcome to the Sarcomere Structure website.  We are part of the Molecuar Medicine Section of the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London.  Our goal is to understand the complete structure of the striated muscle sarcomere.   This website illustrates a sample of our past work.  For further information, refer to Selected Publications or contact us.

        Striated muscles produce movement in every animal.  The sarcomere is the repeating unit of striated muscle (see electron micrographs).   Thus to understand how muscles work, we need to understand the structure and function of a single sarcomere.  Muscle contraction occurs when actin filaments slide past myosin filaments towards the centre of the sarcomere due to the cyclic interactions of myosin crossbridges on the actin filaments.  These filaments are arranged on regular lattices in the sarcomere.  The M-band (or M-line) maintains the myosin filaments in a hexagonal lattice and the Z-band (or Z-line) maintains the actin filaments in a tetragonal lattice.  We study the 3D structure of these components in order to understand their role in the contraction of muscle.   The main techniques that we use are electron microscopy and image processing.

Vacancy

*** PostDoc in Electron Microscopy and Tomography of Cardiac Muscle ***