Abstract
Bate-Smith and Bendall1 reported that rigor mortis in muscle was caused by the irreversible association of actin and myosin as adenosine triphosphate (ATP) became depleted. Conflicting reports have appeared concerning the process of rigor mortis in germ-free animals. Harmon2 has observed that germ-free rats do not become rigid after death. These observations were only visual, but classical theories of the process would require critical re-evaluation if muscle from germ-free animals showed no rigor mortis. We have designed an experiment to investigate the time course of rigor mortis development and associated parameters in normal and germ-free rats (Table 1).
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References
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FORREST, J., KASTENSCHMIDT, L., GREASER, M. et al. Similarity of the Rigor Mortis Process in Normal and Germ-free Rats. Nature 214, 507 (1967). https://doi.org/10.1038/214507a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/214507a0
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