Exam 2 - Lecture 7 Flashcards
Largest container in the body
Skeletal muscle.
Skeletal muscles keep up _______ and you take them offline with _________? Why?
body temperature; Anesthetic, reduce skeletal muscle activity.
Every skeletal muscle has some _____
Motor neuron.
Vast majority of skeletal muscles have ______ neuron(s).
- SOME have more than 1 motor neuron innervation.
Which muscle group has more than 1 motor neuron per skeletal muscle?
Ocular muscles in eye sockets.
Motor neuron cell body is inside _______ of the spinal cord.
Anterior horn in the grey matter.
Motor neuron cells are excited by _____ pathways in the spinal cord, and _________.
Descending pathways from brain, and reflex arcs such as pain giving a strong signal, reflex arcs get involved in same level of cord.
Skeletal muscle fibers is another term for
groups of cells in skeletal muscle.
Some motor neurons are very large and ________
Branch multiple times to control multiple skeletal muscle cells.
Within skeletal muscle cells, there are contractile elements called
Actin/myosin
How are actin/myosin arranged
in tube like structures
Within skeletal muscle cells, they have a __________ that is similar to endoplasmic reticulum.
Sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR)
What is stored in sarcoplasmic reticulum?
Calcium
Is skeletal muscle reliant on calcium from outside the cell?
No, they have their own internal storage.
How long can some of our muscle cells be?
Over a foot long, and can be wide and thick.
Transverse tubules
Helps AP travel lengthwise across skeletal muscle, and also deep into the tissue.
In picture, they run across the width of the muscle cell.
How do AP’s run across skeletal muscle cell? (initial stimulus location, where do they travel, etc.)
Start in a NMJ in the middle and run outwards across the length of the cell
What happens to the muscle during contraction?
it shortens
Histology of skeletal muscle
-Each little branch of motor neurons has NMJ that look like little black balls.
-Each fiber has a NMJ associated with it.
-under a light microscope
-Skeletal muscle cells are extraordinarily long and much longer than in picture
3D scanning image: point out motor neuron and NMJ.
Cross-hatched zebra pattern is from
the alignment of actin and myosin
Mitochondria is copious but especially near _____ in the skeletal muscle cell
NMJ
Infoldings on skeletal muscle near NMJ
Subneural clefts
Further infoldings on subneural clefts
Secondary clefts
nACHr are typically near _______
The top surface of the subneural cleft at the top.
Whats at the bottom of the subneural clefts?
Voltage-activated Na+ channels (fast sodium channels)
Acetylcholinesterase and its purpose
Breaks down acetylcholine into acetyl (aka acetate) and choline.
To give it a finite time period of depolarization, helps shut it down and reset.
What produces/releases acetylcholinesterase? Where does it park it?
The skeletal muscle. At the NMJ junction.
What does acetylcholinesterase use to break down ach?
Hydrolysis.
Acetyl is a ____ group.
Small starch group
What happens to the choline?
Recycled by the motor neuron, will reuptake into motor neuron.
What reassembles the choline into ach?
Enzymes in the motor neuron
Motor neuron is wrapped in _______ which is maintained by ________.
Myelin; Schwann cells
Where do Schwann cells hang out?
Terminal end of motor neurons
How many ach receptors we have at a typical NMJ?
5 million
How many ach receptors are activated in a typical synaptic response?
500,000 or 10%.
How many ach molecules need to be released from one motor neuron?
A bare minimum of 1 million, but usually 2 million because some of it doesn’t make it to target, it may get chopped up by acetylcholinesterase before it makes it to the receptor.
How much K+ leaves through the nACHr channels?
Very minimal.
How does potassium exit the muscle cell if it wants to?
Potassium leak channels