Chapter 11.1-11.4 and 11.7: Muscular Tissue Flashcards
What are the universal characteristics of muscle?
- excitability
- to chemical signals / electrical changes across a plasma membrane
- conductivity
- local electrical change triggers a wave of excitation that travels along the muscle fiber
- contractility
- shortens when stimulated
- extensibility
- capable of being stretched between contractions
- elasticity
- returns to its original rest length after being stretched
What are the connective tissue wrappings around skeletal muscle?
- Endomysium
- around muscle cell
- Perimysium
- around muscle fasicle
- Epimysium
- around entire muscle
- Tendons
- attachments between muscle and bone matrix
What are the names for the plasma membrane and cytoplasm of a muscle cell and what are their components?
- Sarcolemma: plasma membrane
- Sarcoplasm: cytoplasm
- myofibrils: protein cords
- glycogen: stores glucose
- myoglobin: stores some oxygen
- multinucleate
- mitochonrdia
What are(other) distinct, physical components of a muscle cell?
- Sacroplasmic Reticulum (SR): smooth ER
- terminal cisternae: dilated end sacs
- stores calcium
- T tubules
- tubular infoldings of the sarcolemma which penetrate through the cell and emerge on the other side
- Triad
- a T tubule and two terminal cisternae
What are the 3 types of proteins that make up sarcomeres?
- contractile proteins
- regulatory proteins
- structural proteins
What are the types of myofilaments?
- Thick filaments
- made of several hundred myosin molecules
- Thin filaments (actin)
- contain active site that binds to the head of myosin
- Regulatory proteins (turn contraction on and off)
- tropomyosin: block active sites
- troponin: small protein on each tropomyosin molecule
What are the given types of structural proteins?
- Elastic filaments
- titin (huge, springy protein)
- helps stabilize and position thick filament
- prevent overstretching and provide recoil
- titin (huge, springy protein)
- Dystrophin
- links outermost actin to membrane proteins which link to endomysium
- transfers forces of muscle contraction to connective tissue
- genetic defects produce muscular dystrophy
- used for diagnosis
What are striations?
- result from precise organization of myosin and actin in cardiac and skeletal muscles
- they are alternating A bands and I bands
- A band
- anisotropic
- H band: middle of A, thick filaments only
- M line: middle of H band
- I band
- isotropic
- Z disc: provides anchorage for thin filaments and elastic filaments
- bisects I band
What is sliding filament theory?
- Thin filaments slide past the thick filaments, increasing amount of overlap
- ATP needed
- energizes myosin heads for power stroke
- Calcium needed
- uncovers attachment sites on actin
What is the nerve/muscle relationship?
- skeletal muscle doesn’t contract unless stimulated by a nerve
- if nerve connections are severed or poisoned, muscle is paralyzed
- Denervation atrophy: shrinkage of paralyzed muscle when nerve remains disconnected
What are the motor neurons and motor units and their basic characteristics?
- Somatic motor neurons
- cell bodies in brain stem and spinal cord
- axon lead to skeletal muscle
- one motor neuron branches out to a number of muscle fibers
- Motor unit
- one nerve fiber and all the muscles innervated by it
- average unit contains 200 muscle fibers
- small units
- fine degree of control
- 3-6 fibers per neuron
- eye and hand muscles
- Large units
- more strength than control
- powerful contractions with hundreds of fibers
- e.g. gastrocnemius (1000 muscle fibers per neuron)
What do the muscle fibers of one motor neuron do?
- they are dispered throughout muscle
- contract in unison
- produce weak contraction over wide area
- able to sustain long term contraction
- motor units take turns contracting
- partial contraction creates firmness (muscle tension)
- motor units take turns contracting
- effective contraction usually requires contraction of several motor units at once
What are the main components of the neuromuscular junction?
- Synaptic knob
- swollen end of nerve fiber
- contains synaptic vesicles with acetylcholine
- Synaptic cleft
- gap between synaptic knob and sarcolemma
- Schwann cell
- envelopes and isolates Neuromuscular junction
What is the function of the neuromuscular junction?
- nerve impulse from axon opens calcium channels
- Ca+2 enters and causes synaptic vesicles to undergo exocytosis, releasing ACh into synaptic cleft
- Muscle cell has millions of ACh receptors
- Acetylcholine Esterase breaks down ACh, leading to relaxation
Define the following: voltage potential and resting membrane potential
- Voltage potential (electrical potential)
- a difference in electrical charge from one point to another
- Resting membrane potential
- About -90Mv in skeletal muscle cells
- maintained by sodium/potassium pump
- About -90Mv in skeletal muscle cells
- muscle fibers and neurons are excitable: their membranes exhibit voltage changes in response to stimuli