Fine structures in the light diffraction pattern of striated muscle.

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Single skeletal muscle fibres of frog were illuminated with a He-Ne, argon-ion or rhodamine 6G dye laser. The fine structures lying within the diffraction columns moved parallel to the fibre axis without changing their pattern when either the wavelength or the incident angle of the laser beam was varied, or when the fibre was stretched slightly. However, their pattern remained nearly constant when the fibre was submerged in hypotonic or hypertonic solution. As the illumination of about 1 mm or 0.1 mm width scanned along the length of the fibre, new structures emerged while others faded away giving rise to the notion that the diffraction columns were moving in the direction of the scan. A decrease in the illumination width caused the structures lying on the periphery of the diffraction column to disappear and the width of the remaining structures to increase. Measurements rule out the existence of large diffraction planes in these muscles. In addition, they indicate that the fine structures come from the diffraction of the whole rather than independent components of the illuminated volume. The origin of the fine structures is explained by two diffraction models.