(eli5) How do muscles contract on a molecular level?
In: Chemistry
Short answer, electricity
Longer answer, our brains sends charged signals throughout the body through the use of the nervous system. The nervous system is comprised of the central nervous system, the peripheral, sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. In the brain there is approx 100,000,000,000 neurons. Comprised of the normal parts of cells, nucleus, cytoplasm and membrane aswell as axons and dendrites. These parts can communicate over longer distances with eachother and a cluster of axons creates a nerve. The nervous system is responsible for a whole host of things like volunteery movement, receiving light and sound information, moderating involuntary movements like breathing, blood pressure and heart rate and regulating bodily functions like temperature. In terms of movement when we consciously tell our body to do something the neurons pick up that signal and release a chemical via the spinal cord to the relevant axon clusters that then in turn communicate with the muscle fibres and cause the necessary extensions and contractions at a cellular level. Really it is the (as mentioned below, myosin and actin In the cell membrane) of these fibres that picks up these electric signals and sets of the relevant chain of events through certain proteins not overly confident enough in bio to get more elaborate but I hope this helps
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