RUI: Swimming in Rainbow Trout: Ontogeny and Muscle Function

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9604140 Coughlin Fish provide an elegant system for the study of muscle function. Variations in the location and usage of the different muscle fiber types (slow, intermediate and fast) of fish permit evaluation of how each muscle type contributes to locomotion. Rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss, show a number of interesting characteristics of muscle function during steady or sustained swimming (i.e. swimming that employs the slow, aerobic muscle fibers only). Dr. Coughlin will explore how distinct patterns of body curvature and electrical activation in the muscle of swimming trout affect muscle function and locomotion. Also, through comparison of the discrete life history stages observed in trout, such as the parr and smolt stages, the PI will examine how developmental changes in body shape and muscle kinetics effect swimming performance. Lastly, through hormone manipulation, rainbow trout development will be manipulated to allow comparisons of swimming at the different life history stages with control for natural differences in size at each stage. The study of fish swimming increases the understanding of muscle function in all vertebrates. While this study will focus on aerobic muscle function in swimming fish, it has implications for our understanding of aerobic muscle function in other systems, especially other cyclically active muscle such as bird flight muscle and the power generating muscle of mammalian limbs.