Was looking at how rigor mortis is caused and found out it’s from the body leaking calcium into the muscles.
Would adding calcium to meat make it tough similar to what happens with rigor mortis?
Was looking at how rigor mortis is caused and found out it’s from the body leaking calcium into the muscles.
Would adding calcium to meat make it tough similar to what happens with rigor mortis?
I’m not sure what adding calcium to meat will do to it, but I’ll comment on the rigor mortis side specifically.
It’s true that calcium is involved, but it’s not because it leaks into the muscles. I found this open textbook that covers the details:
https://open.oregonstate.education/anatomy2e/chapter/muscle-fiber-excitation/
I think what you’re referring to is this bit:
It’s a bit more complicated at the tissue level, but that’s more important for the macroscopic changes we see during rigor mortis. Individual cells contracting isn’t enough for us to contract our muscles at that scale. We also need the fibers to pull past each other.
In particular, the “myosin heads” grab onto “actin filaments,” and pull themselves along, and they use ATP to detach each time.
Which brings us to this bit from the link:
I’m not sure if it’s possible to trigger a contraction manually using calcium alone, and you likely won’t be able to do it with regular meat because the proteins break down within a few days after death (which is why rigor mortis goes away after a while).
You could look into how they trigger contractions in muscle fibers in the lab
The textbook link is detailed, but it’s not great for the average person. I found this one to be more accessible:
https://animalbiosciences.uoguelph.ca/~swatland/ch5_1.htm
Depleted atp is adp. Tri phosphate to double