17. A researcher wants to determine what controls smooth muscle contractility

Case 1. First, while keeping other factors constant, he added a drug that specifically activated the activities of Rho kinase.

a) what happened to the contractility of the cell? why?

Case 2. To do further testing, he separately added a different reagent that could inhibit the activity of myosin light chain kinase.

b) what happened to the cell contractility this time? why?

Case 3. Then he repeated the above experiments in Case 1 when myosin light chain kinase activities were either increased or decreased.

c) speculate the contractile state of the smooth muscle cell.