The Sliding Filament Model : 1972–2004

This review will describe the investigation of the mechanism of muscle contraction and cell motility from 1972 to the present. The preceding article in this issue by Andrew Szent-Gyorgyi covers the period up to 1972. In 1972 the field of actomyosin interactions was summarized in a conference at Cold Spring Harbor, published in the Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology XXXVII, 1973. After this meeting many participants thought that the problem of muscle contraction was solved “in principle”. In many ways this attitude was correct. In the mid-1950s it had been established that during muscle contraction two sets of filaments of constant length slide past each other. Prior to the sliding filament model, the most popular theories held that contraction was produced by the shortening of some large, rubber-like polymers. Since 1954, the motor that produced filament sliding, the myosin head, had been observed...