The effect of myoglobin-facilitated oxygen transport on the basal metabolism of papillary muscle.

A mathematical model of oxygen diffusion into cylindrical papillary muscles is presented. The model partitions total oxygen flux into its simple and myoglobin-facilitated components. The model includes variable sigmoidal, exponential, or hyperbolic functions relating oxygen partial pressure to both fractional myoglobin saturation and rate of oxygen consumption. The behavior of the model was explored for a variety of saturation- and consumption-concentration relations. Facilitation of oxygen transport by myoglobin was considerable as indexed both by the elevation of oxygen partial pressure on the longitudinal axis of the muscle and by the fraction of total oxygen flux at the muscle center contributed by oxymyoglobin. Despite its facilitation of oxygen flux at the muscle center, myoglobin made only a negligible contribution to the total oxygen consumption averaged over the muscle cross-section. Hence the presence of myoglobin fails to explain either the experimentally determined basal metabolism-muscle radius relation or the stretch effect observed in isolated papillary muscle.