Electrophoresis Protein Detection & Instron Tensile Testing:
The Reinforcing Properties of Myosin in
Muscle
Name: Victoria Grace Behrend
Class: BE 210
The goal of this experiment is to use both gel electrophoresis image analysis and deformation techniques to correlate the concentration of myosin present in muscle with its tensile strength. Two tissue samples will be analyzed: 1. Porcine Skeletal Muscle 2. Porcine Cardiac Muscle. The tissue samples will be cut in half so that half of the samples can be used for gel electrophoresis analysis and their corresponding halves can be deformed using the Instron 4444 machine to determine the Elastic moduli of the tissue samples. Additionally, all tissue samples will be taken from the same pig. These two steps will introduce fewer variables into the experiment. To calculate the amount of myosin present in each muscle sample, molecular sizes of the bands will be determined based on the size of the known standard as well as through the use of the Matlab algorithm. Using specific loading protocols, the halves of the muscle samples will also be placed into the Instron 4444 machine and the applied forces and deformations of the samples will be recorded until they rupture. At this point, the elastic moduli of the two different tissue samples will be calculated, as the forces and the deformations will be known.