Muscle Flashcards
What are the three major types of muscle?
Skeletal, cardiac and smooth.
What are features of skeletal muscle?
Voluntary, attached to the bone, striated and uninuclear.
What are the features of cardiac muscle?
Involuntary, not attached to the bone and a specialised form of skeletal muscle. Mae up on intercalated discs.
What are the features of smooth muscle?
Involuntary, not attached to the bone and myocytes with a fusiform shape (spindle).
What is the sarcomere?
The functional unit of the skeletal muscle (Z line to Z line).
What is the A band?
Thick filaments of myosin that are found at the centre of the sarcomere.
What is the I band?
Contains the thinner filaments actin that do not overlap with the myosin. They are found either side of the A ban with the Z disc in the centre.
What is the M line?
Proteins that link the central regions of the thick filaments.
What is the H zone?
The light area between the ends of the thin filaments that is found in the centre of the sarcomere.
What is the Z line?
The network of proteins that anchor the thin filaments.
What lies on top of actin?
A band called tropomyosin.
What does troponin do?
Connects the tropomyosin to the actin and blocks the receptors so that myosin cannot bin. This is the case when the muscle is not contracting.
What binding sites do myosin heads contain?
Ones for ATP and for actin.
What role does calcium have in muscle contraction?
It causes a conformational change to move the tropomyosin so a cross bridge can form and contraction can occur.
What are thin filaments made up of?
G-actin - this forms protein chains that are called filament-actin.