Connective Tissue Flashcards
What 3 major factors affect meat tenderness?
- Background toughness
- Degree of shortening
- Post-mortem aging
Purpose of connective tissue
supports and binds together other structural elements throughout the body
Types of connective tissue fibers
- Collagen fibers (tendons and ligaments)
- Elastic fibers (ligament and arterials walls, organ frameworks)
- Reticular fibers (supports stroma of highly cellular organs)
Which is the most abundant fiber?
collagen
Collagen fiber
a fiber with regularly oriented array of polypeptide chains
Amino acids in collagen
~1/3 = glycine (allows it to form a coil)
~1/3 = proline/hydroxyproline (used to determine amount of collagen in tissue)
What is the name of the polypeptide chain in collagen? What do they form?
alpha-chain; 3 chains form a tropocollagen. 3 tropocollagen forms a collagen molecule
Intra vs Intermolecular crosslinking
Intra: within a fibril
Inter: between fibrils
What temperature are cross linkages soluble at? What happens if you consistently heat it?
65°C; it will become gelatin
Is collagen more soluble in younger or older animals? Why?
Younger animals because they don’t have as many cross linkages
Elastin fiber
a rubbery protein that is arranged randomly making it highly elastic and can be stretched 250% without permanent deformation
it has little nutritive value
Amino acids in elastin
most abundant is glycine
What muscles have high elastin?
Perimysium of the bovine semitendinosus and biceps femoris
When it comes to tenderness, what factors about CT is important?
- Amount of connective tissue
- Type of connective tissue protein
- Degree of x-linking (aka collage solubility)
reticular fibers
fibers that have a spider web appearence
