Muscle Tissue Flashcards
Skeletal muscle tissue
Description: Long, cylindrical, striations
Function: Voluntary movement, locomotion
Location: skeletal muscles, attached to bones or occasionally to skin
Cardiac Muscle tissue
Description: branching, striated, intercalated disks
Function: as it contracts, it propels blood into the circulation, involuntary
Location: in the walls of the heart
Smooth Muscle Tissue
Description: spindle shaped cells with central nuclei, no striations, cells arranged closely to form sheets
Function: propels substances or objects along internal passageways: involuntary control
Location: mostly in the walls of hallow organs
Physical characteristics of a muscle
- Excitability: receive and respond to a stimulus
- Contractility: the ability to shorten forcefully when stimulated
- Extensibility: the ability to be stretched or extended
- Elasticity: the ability to recoil after being stretched
Muscle functions
- Producing movement
- Maintaining posture and body position
- Stabilizing joints
- Generating heat
Types of muscle
Skeletal, cardiac, smooth
The connective tissue sheaths
Epimysium, perimysium and endomysium
Insertion and origin
When a muscle contracts, the movable bone, the INSERTION, moves towards the immovable bone, the ORIGIN
Sarcoplasm
Cytoplasm of a muscle fiber
Contains glycosomes and myoglobin
Sarcolemma
A muscle fibres plasma membrane
Glycosomes
Granules of stored glycogen: provide glucose during muscle cell activity
Myoglobin
Red coloured protein: stores oxygen to use during muscle cell activity
Myofibrils
Densely packed fibers that are involved in muscle contraction.
Each muscle fiber contains thousands of rodlike myofibrils
Myofilaments
Composes myofibrils that are organized into sarcomeres
A Bands and I Bands
Perfectly aligned with each other
Gives the cell it’s striated appearance
A band: darker in colour
I band: lighter in colour (bisected by a dark line called the Z DISK)