Muscles Flashcards
What are the four major tissue types?
The four major tissue types are:
- Muscle
- Nervous
- Connective
- Epithelial
What are tendons?
Tendons are connective tissue that connect muscle to bone
What are ligaments?
Ligaments are connective tissue that connect bone to bone
What are the three types of muscle?
The three types of muscle are:
- Smooth
- Skeletal
- Cardiac
What germ layer are muscles derived from?
Muscles are derived from the mesoderm
What is cardiac muscle and its characteristics?
Cardiac muscle is the muscle tissue of the heart
- Has intercalated discs between cells. This is a membranous boundary between adjacent cells
- Usually has a single nucleus
- Striated
- Involuntary muscle
- Full of Gap junctions between cells that connect the cytoplasm of heart cells to one another. This allows for rapid transmission of ions across the heart to coordinate the pumping of it. We often refer to these gap junctions as being electrically coupled.
- 40% of the cytoplasmic volume contains mitochondria, compared to 2% in skeletal muscle. It’s a huge amount.
What is atrial natriuretic factor?
Cardiac muscle cells contain granules that contain atrial natriuretic factor.
- It’s a hormone that acts on the kidneys to help lower blood pressure by allowing sodium and water loss.
What is cardiac hypertrophy?
Cardiac hypertrophy occurs in athletes and is caused by certain pathologies as well.
- Cardiac cells increase in size
How does the body repair heart damage?
The body doesn’t regenerate lost cells due to heart damage. Instead it replaces the dead heart cells with fibrous connective tissues. Thus the need for heart transplants
What is smooth muscle and its characteristics?
Smooth muscle is the muscle of our involuntary contractions, found in walls of blood vessels, GI tract, urinary tract, reproductive tract, urinary bladder, and internal organs such as stomach and intestines
- No striations
- Involuntary
- has a single nucleus
- Regulated by: Hormones, autonomic nervous system, local physiological conditions
- Regeneration of cells can occur, thus they can undergo mitosis (unlike cardiac muscle cells)
- Actin and myosin are not regularly arranged along the cell length, the myosin is scattered in the cytosol, and the actin is attached to structures called dense bodies. (Thus no striations are noted)
- Ca++ complex with a calcium-binding protein called calmodulin which is involved in the contraction of smooth muscle. (this is sufficient for the DAT)
What is Calmodulin?
Calmodulin is a calcium-binding protein.
- It binds with Ca++ to facilitate the contraction of smooth muscle.
What is skeletal muscle and its characteristics?
Skeletal muscle is:
- Striated
- Voluntary
- Multi-nucleated
How do skeletal muscle cells regenerate?
Like cardiac muscle, the nuclei do not undergo mitosis. However, limited regeneration can occur
- Muscle building satellite cells might be able to fuse with preexisting muscle cells to increase the muscle mass
- Satellite cells reside on the external surface of skeletal muscle cells and are not part of cardiac muscle.
What is the epimysium?
The epimysium is dense connective tissue that surrounds the entire muscle
What are the three types of skeletal muscle fibers?
The three types of muscle fibers are:
- Red: Many mitochondria, rich in myoglobin, rich in oxidative enzymes, and rich in blood supply
- White: Few mitochondria, poor in myoglobin, poor in oxidative enzymes, poor in blood supply
- Intermediate: mixture of the two.
Most muscles have all three, but the percentages vary. Think dark vs white meat on chicken
What are myofibrils?
Myofibrils are long cylindrical structures that make up a large portion of skeletal muscle.
- Myofibrils are composed of thin and thick filaments
- Thin filaments are Actin
- Thick filaments are Myosin
What kind of arrangement of bands is seen in myofibrils?
We see a filament arrangement pattern of light and dark bands
NB: Favorite DAT question
What is the sarcomere?
The sarcomere is the structural and functional unit of the myofibril.