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REVIEW article
Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.
Sec. Biomechanics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2025.1478626
This article is part of the Research Topic Emerging Tools, Concepts, and Applications in Multi-Scale Mechanobiology View all 5 articles
The Unique Biology of Catch Muscles: Insights into Structure, Function, and Robotics Innovations
Provisionally accepted- National Scientific Center of Marine Biology, Far East Branch (RAS), Vladivostok, Primorsky Krai, Russia
The Review covers the current state of functions, neurotransmitter innervation, the structure, and development of the contractile apparatus of unique group of catch muscles inherent only to bivalves. In contrast to conventional muscles, during contraction and relaxation, catch muscles possess a unique ability to enter the contraction holding state, referred to as catch state. The latter consists in energy-efficient maintenance of long-lasting tension developed by the muscle without consuming ATP-derived energy and regulated by serotonin and acetylcholine. Despite the molecular mechanism of catch state phenomenon still remains unclear, the combination of experimental data and the resulting assumptions allow one to design new energy-efficient and chemically-driven artificial muscles. The analysis of the structure and function of the catch muscles in this work opens the way to a conceptually new strategy for energy-efficient biomimetic robotics, including underwater robotics.
Keywords: Catch state, thick and thin filaments, Myorod, Twitchin, myogenesis, development, Single cell transcriptomic analysis, Robotic mechanisms
Received: 10 Aug 2024; Accepted: 01 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Dyachuk and Vyatchin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Vyacheslav Dyachuk, National Scientific Center of Marine Biology, Far East Branch (RAS), Vladivostok, 690041, Primorsky Krai, Russia
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