37.1 Muscles: Biological Motors That Generate Force and Produce Movement Flashcards
why are muscles the “biological motors” of the body?
because they generate force and produce movement
what does a muscle’s ability to produce movement depend on?
the electrically excitable muscle cells containing proteins that can be activated by the nervous system
basic features of muscle organization and function are conserved across the vast diversity of….
eukaryotes (cnidarians had the first muscle fibres-jellyfish and sea anemones)
what largely determines how muscles contract to produce force and movement?
the geometry and organization of proteins in muscles
fiber
in animals, a term for a muscle cell, which produces forces within an animal’s body and exerts forces on the environment
muscles are composed of elongated cells called:
muscle fibers
muscle fibres use:
ATP generated through cellular respiration to generate force and change length during a contraction
force
an interaction that changes the movement of an object, such as a push or pull by one object interacting with another object
the work performed by a muscle is equal to:
force times length change
muscles only exert pulling forces, therefore…
pairs of muscles are arranged to produce movements in two opposing directions at specific joints of the skeleton
all muscles contain the same contractile proteins that enable them to shorten and produce force, these proteins are:
actin and myosin
filament
in animals, a thin thread of proteins that interacts with other filaments to cause muscles to shorten. in plants, the part of the stamen that supports the anther
although all muscle fibres have filaments of actin and myosin, in different types of muscles…
the filaments are arranged differently
what are the two broad groups of muscles (based on function and appearance)
striated muscle and smooth muscle
striated muscle
skeletal muscle and cardiac muscle, which appear striped under a light microscope-actin and myosin filaments are arranged in a regularly repeating pattern
skeletal muscle
muscle that connects to the body skeleton to move an animal’s limbs and torso (elongated, many nuclei in each cell)
cardiac muscle
muscle cells that make up the walls of the atria and ventricles and contract to pump blood through the heart (less elongated when compared to skeletal muscle, tranches, only contain or more nuclei per cell)
smooth muscle
the muscle in the walls of arteries, the respiratory system, and the digestive and excretory systems; smooth muscle appears uniform under the light -actin and myosin filaments are irregularly organized
when compared to cardiac and skeletal muscles, smooth muscles contract….
slowly
whole muscles are made up of :
parallel bundles of individual muscle fibres (muscle cells)
myofibril
a long rodlike structure in muscle fibbers that contains parallel arrays of the actin and myosin filaments
each muscle finer contains hundreds of:
myofibrils (has a striated appearance due to their regular molecular organization)
each myosin molecule consists of:
two long polypeptide chains coiled together, each ending with a globular head
thick filament
a parallel grouping of myosin molecules that makes up the myosin filament
thin filament
two helically arranged actin filaments twisted together that make up the actin filament
tropomyosin
a protein that runs in the grooves formed by the actin helices and blocks the myosin-binding sites