Myofilament
Any of the smallest contractile units of a myofibril (striated muscle fiber).
Myofilaments are the three protein filaments of myofibrils in muscle cells. The main proteins involved are myosin, actin, and titin. Myosin and actin are the contractile proteins and titin is an elastic protein. The myofilaments act together in muscle contraction, and in order of size are a thick one of mostly myosin, a thin one of mostly actin, and a very thin one of mostly titin.
Types of muscle tissue are striated skeletal muscle and cardiac muscle, obliquely striated muscle (found in some invertebrates), and non-striated smooth muscle. Various arrangements of myofilaments create different muscles. Striated muscle has transverse bands of filaments. In obliquely striated muscle, the filaments are staggered. Smooth muscle has irregular arrangements of filaments.
Structure
There are three different types of myofilaments: thick, thin, and elastic filaments.
The public source identifies “Myofilament” as any of the smallest contractile units of a myofibril (striated muscle fiber). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Myofilament, smallest and contractile.
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This entry incorporates text from “Myofilament” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.