13.13 Muscles Flashcards
Describe how smooth muscle contracts and where it is found. Give examples of smooth muscle.
Contracts without conscious control.
Found in walls of internal organs (apart from heart)
E.g. stomach, intestine and blood vessels.
Describe how cardiac muscle contracts and where it is found.
Contracts without conscious control (myogenic)
Only found within the heart.
What type of muscle is used in locomotion- movement? Give an example of how muscles can work together.
Skeletal muscle
E.g. biceps and triceps move the lower arm antagonistically (oppositely)
Explain how skeletal muscles work.
- Attached to the bones by tendons
- Contracts in response to acetylcholine from motor neurone (neuromuscular junction).
- Muscles can only pull- opposing muscles groups are needed to pull in opposite directions at a joint. One contracts, one relaxes.
What is muscles group contracting referred to as?
Agonist
What is muscles group relaxing referred to as?
Antagonist
Describe and explain the structure of skeletal muscles.
- Highly specialised muscle fibres= long thin cells containing several nuclei.
- Muscle cell surrounded by a thin cell membrane called a sarcolemma.
- Cell contains cytoplasm called sarcoplasm, contains large number of mitochondria.
- Fibres contain large number of myofibrils- run parallel along length of cell.
- Myofibril surrounded by sarcoplasmic reticulum
- Myofibril made of myofilaments- myosin and actin
What does skeletal muscle look like under a light microscope?
Often called striated muscle as under the light microscope, dark bands are visible across muscle fibres.
What does skeletal muscle look like under a electron microscope?
Dark bands are visible across each myofibril.
Each sarcomere has a distinctive banding pattern due to presence or absence of myosin and actin.
Actin is the ______ filament
Thin
Myosin is the ______ filament
Thick
H zone contains
Only myosin with no overlap
M line is
Myosin anchored
A band is
Only myosin
I band is
Only actin
Z disk/line is
Actin anchored
What is the sarcomere and what happens when muscles contract?
One Z disc to another.
When muscle contracts, Z lines get closer together, thicken and shorten.
Briefly describe what happens to areas in the myofibril during muscle contraction?
Each sarcomere shortens, bringing Z lines closer together, as the actin is pulled over myosin filaments (slide over each other), increasing the amount they overlap.
What happens to A band as the muscle contracts?
Stays the same
What happens to I band as the muscle contracts?
Shortens