Muscle Research and 

 Flagellar Movement 



TERU HAYASHI 



Department of Zoology, Columbia University, New York, and the Marine Biological 

 Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 



All papers in this symposium have touched on the similarities in 

 concept and experimental approach in the study of muscle and in 

 the study of sperm. Bishop (this symposium) especially has enlarged 

 on this theme, and has pointed out that, due to the technical diffi- 

 culties in handling the material, the elucidation of the mechanism 

 of movement in sperm has lagged behind the muscle studies. The 

 natural consequence has been that the sperm physiologists have 

 looked to the muscle literature for concepts and experimental 

 breakthroughs which they then have applied to the study of the 

 sperm cell with some success, and one now finds commonplace such 

 terms as "contractile protein" and "relaxing factors" in the sperm 

 literature. 



There is an inherent clanger in this approach, however, in that 

 the sperm physiologists give too much credit to the muscle people; 

 that is, they show a certain naivete in accepting information from 

 muscle studies. This results in a tendency of the sperm people to fol- 

 low the lead of the muscle investigators too slavishly, with a conse- 

 quent stifling of the possibility to develop new methods and ap- 

 proaches. It may therefore be well at this time to point out the in- 

 adequacies of the information from muscle, since the significance of 

 this information has been well documented in this volume. 



Molecular mechanisms of contraction are based largely on the 

 wealth of information obtained from the study of so-called muscle 

 models. This is a poor term, and the better term "simplified systems" 

 is suggested, to include such inanimate systems as glycerinated mus- 

 cle, extracted enzyme, and homogenates. These are all "simplified 



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