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Muscle capillaries serve as the final pathway for oxygen and substrate exchange between blood and muscle cells. Intuitively one suspects that the size of the capillary bed should be matched to the metabolic needs of the cells it supplies, implying some optimization between structure and functional demands, and that oxygen should be a dominating factor. Is this concept of an optimal design merely an intellectually appealing idea or can it be supported by evidence?
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Hoppeler et al. (1988) studied this question.
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