The mechanism of cold‐induced shortening in beef muscle

Abstract

Summary When pre‐rigor beef muscle is chilled, it undergoes a slow contracture from the coupling of mechanical and chemical events within the myofibrils. Cold‐shortening occurs through a thirty‐ to forty‐fold increase in the concentration of ionic calcium in the myofibrillar region as the temperature of pre‐rigor muscle is reduced from 15°C to 0°C.