Fig. 6

Contraction-induced breakages are more pronounced in EDL fibres from Actn3KO mice. a Schematic of the eccentric contractions protocol, maximally activating a single fibre and then imposing a 20% stretch before returning to resting length L0 and subsequent relaxation. Three eccentric contractions were carried out followed by a final assessment of maximum isometric force. b Actn3KO fibres showed much lower survival and higher rate of breakage during the sequence to a significance of p = 0.02 based on logrank analysis. In b, fibres that broke are shown in the segments of the pie chart with diagonal lines, while nonbreaking fibres are shown in solid fill