Muscles Flashcards
(49 cards)
What are the 3 types of muscles
- smooth muscle (for contraction and dilation, usuall on vessels)
- cardiac muscle
- striated muscle
What are the functions of skeletal muscle
- locomotion and breathing
- postural support
- heat production during cold stress
- largest protein store in the body (body will use proteins in these muscles in malnourished)
What are the key structural points of skeletal muscle fibres (cells)
- striated
- syncytium (multi nucleated cells)
- peripheral nuclei (nuclei found near the outside of the cell
What is a fasicle
- an bundle of muscle fibres
- multiple fasicles make up a muscle
what is epimysium
CT layer that surrounds the entire muscle
What is perimysium
CT that surrounds each fasicle
Why is CT important for muscles?
Functional (transfer of info) and protective
What is the sarcolemma
muscle cell membrane
what are myofibrils
rod-like structures that pack the filaments together. also known as a muscle fibre
what are myofilaments
what are the different kinds
threadlike strands within myofibrils
- Actin (thin filament) (proponin and propomyosin)
- myosin (thick filament)
what is a sarcomere
an individual unit conatining actin/myosin
Within a sarcomere, what are the different bands/lines called and what are they
- I-bands: actin filaments alone
- A bands: zones containing myosin
- Z line (or disc): defines boundary between sarcomeres
- M-line: transverse line in the middle of the sarcomere that binds the myosin filaments
What is the sliding filament theory
- muscle shortening occurs due to the movement of the actin filament over the myosin filament
- formation of cross-bridges between actin and myosin filaments
- reduction in the distance between Z lines of the sarcomere
What is involved in cross bridge formation and how do they work
- tropomyosin: located along the 2 chains of actin filaments and when calcium is low, blocks the binding of myosin to the actin and the fibre
- troponin: complex that is attached to each tropomyosin
Why is calcium important for muscle function
stimulates muscle contraction
what does troponin do
captures calcium and undergoes a conformational change that lifes tropomyosin away from the actin filament
What are the 3 different fast muscle fibres
- type 2a (fast oxidative)
- tpye 2b (fast glycolytic)
- type 2x (intermediate between a and b)
what are the slow muslce fibres
slow to contract
type 1 fibres (slow oxidative)
how are fibre type compositions within muscles analysed for identification
- immunochemistry (looks for cell markers)
- histochemistry (looks for ATPase activity which is positively correlated to muscle contraction velocity
- fibres have specific metabolic profiles
what is muscle fatigue
decreased maximum contractile force
- ATP is required for formation of cross bridges
- when muscles fatigue, inorganic phosphate increases and calcium decreases
What are the components of the motor unit
- a single alpha motor neuron and all of the corresponding muscle fibres it innervates
what are the key note about a motor unit
- all fibres in a MU innervated simultaneously
- all the same fibre type
- MU size dictates the level of control
- slow MU tend to be smaller and are recruited first during normal exercise
- hennemans size principle (as force increases, more larger MU recruited)
- in ballistic locomotion, faster MU can be recruited initially
label
What is acetylcholine and what is its function
- the chemical intermdiary in the transfer of excitation from nerve to muscle
- releases the synaptic vesicles (calcium triggers the release)
- ACh is then released into the synaptic cleft where it combines with ACh receptors causing depolarisation of the muscle cell and activates the ion channel for Na ions
- it is then rapidly broken down by acetylcholinesterase