Biophysical Journal 57: 663-667 (1990)
© 1990 the Biophysical Society

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Magnetic field of a single muscle fiber. First measurements and a core conductor model.

Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235.

ABSTRACT

We present the first measurements of the magnetic field from a single muscle fiber of the frog gastrocnemius, obtained by using a toroidal pickup coil coupled to a room-temperature, low-noise amplifier. The axial currents associated with the magnetic fields of single fibers were biphasic and had peak-to-peak amplitudes ranging between 50 and 100 nA, depending primarily on the fiber radius. With an intracellular microelectrode, we measured the action potential of the same fiber, which allowed us to determine that the intracellular conductivity of the muscle fiber in the core conductor approximation was 0.20 +/- 0.09 S/m. Similarly, we found that the effective membrane capacitance was 0.030 +/- 0.011 F/m2. These results were not significantly affected by the anisotropic conductivity of the muscle bundle. We demonstrate how our magnetic technique can be used to determine the transmembrane action potential without penetrating the membrane with a microelectrode, thereby offering a reliable, stable, and atraumatic method for studying contracting muscle fibers.