Midterm 1 Flashcards
What are fascicles surrounded by?
Heavy connective tissue (i.e.
perimysium)
What is the shape of muscle fibers and how is it helpful?
Fibers are polygonal shape and that allows for greater packing density.
Approximately how many muscle fibers are in a muscle?
Thousands (bicep: ~200,000)
Muscle fibers are _____ into bundles called _______
- bound
2. fascicles
Can a muscle fiber work if it is not in contact with a capillary?
No
Myofibrils ___ the _____ of muscle fibers (HINT: length)
“run the length”
What is the diameter of a myofibril?
1-2 micrometres
What is the whole muscle surrounded by?
Heavy connective tissue layer called epimysium.
How thick are muscle fibers?
Fibers are 10-100 micrometres thick
How long are muscle fibers?
A few mm to several cm long and there is 1 micrometre space between fibers
What surrounds the sarcolemma? Describe it.
The endomysium. It is a mesh-work of loose connective tissue surrounding each muscle fiber.
What percent of the muscle fiber is the myofibril?
Myofibrils make up ~85% of the muscle fiber.
How many myofibrils per fibre?
A few hundred to several thousand
Each muscle fiber is surrounded by _________
sarcolemma (cell membrane)
How are we able to produce force and shorten muscle?
Myofilaments within the myofibril interact with one another. The thin filament, actin, pulls against the thick filament, myosin to shorten. Thus, shortening the muscle.
What is myosin made up of?
Myosin is made of 100-400 myosin proteins. First there are 2 myosin heavy chains and these make up the tail (or rod). The myosin head is made up of 2 heads of the myosin protein which are made of myosin light chains
What is the structure of Actin?
Actin filaments are thin filaments that are made up of small actin proteins (globular shaped) and these strands of actin protein are wound around each other.
On top, tropomyosin (a thin filament) wraps around actin filament. And Troponin globular proteins bind onto tropomyosin.
Why is tropomyosin and troponin importnat?
These are important to ensure muscle contraction and allowing myosin heads to attach to actin filament and pull and cause muscle contraction
Each section of the myofibril is called _________
a sarcomere
Within a single sarcomere, how long is the myosin filament?
the myosin filament is about 1.5 micrometers
Within a single sarcomere, how long is the actin filament?
the actin filament is about 1 micrometer
Approximately how long is a sarcomere?
Actin slides in and out depending on muscle contraction so we don’t have an EXACT length of a sarcomere all the time but it is around 2 micrometers
Z Line
The line that marks the end of one sarcomere and the start of another sarcomere (usually thin dark lines)
A band
Thick dark band (striations) that are seen in muscle fibres), containing mostly myosin but it also contains actin filaments as well (overlapped at this point)