Weeks 6-7 - Muscles + Embryology Flashcards
Skeletal muscle: What is a myofibril? What is a muscle fibre (posh name too)?
A bundle of sarcomeres
Hundreds of myofibrils - a syncytium
Skeletal muscle: What is the length-tension relationship?
Few myosin heads have access to actin at full stretch, force is weak (vice versa)
Skeletal muscle: What is endomysium? What is perimysium? What is epimysium?
Loose connective tissue surrounding each muscle fibre, connecting to basement membrane
Mixed connective tissue separating fascicles
Loose connective tissue between fascia and muscle body
Skeletal muscle: What is a fascicle? What is fascia?
Bundle of muscle fibres, held by perimysium
Dense connective tissue layer covering muscle
What is skeletal muscle adapted for?
+ power generation
Controlled movements
What are the properties of cardiac muscle?
- Has mono or denucleated single cells (cardiomyocytes) with limb-like extensions, connecting neighbouring cells
- Cross striations
- Centrally located nuclei
- Extensions connected via intercalated discs
- Lots of mitochondria
- Each cardiomyocyte has a basement membrane
- Adapted for rhythmic wall contractions
Cardiac muscle: What are intercalated discs?
Desmosomes and low resistance gap junctions (allowing membrane depolarisation transfer)
What are the properties of smooth muscle?
- No myofibrils or striations
- Adapted for high amplitude contraction, high versatility and low power output
- Extension requires antagonistic force
What is a motor unit?
Motor neuron + muscle fibre it is attached to
Cardiac muscle: What is short axis? What is long axis?
Mid ventricular section
Oblique sagittal plane
What increases cardiac pump? What is the route of cardiac action potential?
Inotropy - increased contraction force
Chronotropy - increased contraction frequency
Propagated along sarcolemma, into T-tubules
What causes plateau in cardiac muscle graph? What is the role of calcium transient? What is essential for cardiac contraction?
Ca2+ influx from extra-cellular space
Key to drug action as many work on Ca2+ transient modulation (i.e. caffeine)
Extracellular Ca2+
What does increasing cardiomyocyte length do? Why does digitalis work?
Increases Ca2+ sensitivity
Increases heart function as it increases Ca2+ release, so increased contractility
Where are 3 locations of ATP origin in cardiac muscle?
70% = from fat oxidation
20% = from glucose oxidation
10% = from other sources
What are the functions of smooth muscle? What are some of its properties?
Digestion, breathing, reproduction
- Normally partially contracted
- Forms net-like structure meaning shape can be altered
What are the structural organisations of smooth muscle?
Single sheets = circular orientation, varied diameter (flow and pressure control)
Multiple sheets = two perpendicular sheets, varied diameter and length (peristalsis)
Why are muscles called striated muscle?
Intermediate filaments form centre of sarcomere, held in register by cross connections at every Z disc and middle of sarcomere
Why do ventricles form wringing motion when the contract?
Due to spiral, fibre like arrangement of cardiomyocytes
Why can smooth muscle contract further than striated muscles? What is the role of intermediate filaments? What holds together actin filaments?
Upon contraction, it shortens but diameter increases
Prevent over-stretching by forming a scaffold
Patches of cytoskeletal proteins (dense bodies)
How is contraction controlled in skeletal muscle?
- Motor nerves of somatic nervous system
- Alpha motor neurons innervate force producing fibres
- No gap junctions so APs only generated by motor end plates (1 synapse per fibre)
- Quick feedback
- Allows precise movement control
What is the route of cardiac depolarisation?
- SAN
- Atria
- AV node
- Purkinje fibres
What are the properties of Purkinje fibres?
- Have aligned purkinje cells (large heart cells filled with glycogen granules in centre)
- Generate robust APs which travel to ventricles
- Individual activation of cardiomyocytes
What is mentioned in Stirling’s Law of the Heart?
Increasing diastolic length of cardiomyocyte increases its’ sensitivity to Ca2+
What are the properties of muscular tissue?
Derived from mesoderm and composed of cells with filaments of contractile proteins in cytoplasm
What are the properties of multiunit muscle? What are the properties of single unit muscle?
Nerves interact with all muscle cells as structurally independent
- Each unit requires separate stimulation
- Neurogenic Nerves interact with some muscle cells, electrically coupled by gap junctions
- AP propagates between cells
- Myogenic
- Stretch-relaxation response (i.e. bladder, where connective tissue prevents over-stretching and allows hollow organs to fill with maintained muscle tension)
What are varicosities? What are the properties of calcium in regards to smooth muscle (contraction)? How does noradrenaline affect Ca2+ (relaxation)?
Where nerves meet muscle and neurotransmitter release - + extracellular calcium conc.
- Influx via voltage-gated channels
- Intracellular calcium stored in sarcoplasmic reticulum
- Ca2+ binds to calmodulin, activating enzyme MLCK, phosphorylation
Reduces Ca2+ conc, dissociation of calmodulin from MLCK, no phosphorylation
What are the differences in calcium in smooth muscle?
- Source differs from skeletal muscle
- Influx across plasma membrane
- Mobilised from intracellular stores
What are the 3 methods of muscle catabolism?
- Ubiquitin-proteasome protein degrading system
- Autophagy
- Calcium-activated proteases
How is muscle breakdown prevented and what is muscle atrophy?
Repair damaged fibres (after exercise)
When muscle breakdown exceeds synthesis
- Late cancer or HIV stages
- Cytokines are released, increasing degradation
- Enzymes involved in ubiquitin-proteasome pathway increased
What is nitrogen balance? Where does it occur? What is positive and negative nitrogen balance?
- Amino acids cannot be stored and NH4+ is removed to form ammonia
- NH4+ is converted into urea and excreted via urea cycle
- Remaining carbon skeleton from AA NH4+ removal is used for energy
Liver
Positive = nitrogen intake > loss (pregnancy, growing child, injury)
Negative = nitrogen intake < loss (starvation, illness, fever, ageing, cancer cachexia)
What diseases are associated with nitrogen balance? Where do we get essential AA’s from?
Kwashiorkor Aminoacidopathies
Maple syrup urine disease (defects of branched chain amino acid metabolism)
Black urine disease
PKU (defects of phenylalanine metabolism)
Our diet
How is NH4+ formed? What are the details of the processes?
Via transamination and oxidative deamination
Transamination = amino acid to glutamate = alpha amino acid + alpha-ketoglutarate –> alpha keto acid + glutamate
- Requires alanine aminotransferase enzyme
Oxidative deamination = glutamate to NH4+
What are the properties of the urea cycle?
- 1 nitrogen = from transamination / deamination and other from aspartate
- Glucogenic amino acids carbon skeletons increase glucose concentration
- Ketogenic amino acids carbon skeletons increase ketone body concentration
What is neuromuscular? What are synapse properties? What is a myocyte?
Affects both neural and muscular tissue
- Unidirectional
- Irreversible delay
- Chemical A muscle fibre cell
What condition is associated with neuromuscular junction and what are its properties? What is the treatment?
Myasthenia gravis:
- Affects 1 / 10 - 20,000, 2X more women than men
- Autoimmune disorder
- Autoantibodies are produced against nicotinic ACh receptors
Treatment = increase acetylcholine levels at NMJ by preventing ACh metabolism
What are neuromuscular junctions?
- Synapses between every muscle and neurones
- Single axon to single muscle fibre (eye muscle)
- Single axon to many muscle fibres (bicep)
What is the route of action potential to muscle fibre contraction?
- Action potential at axon terminal
- Terminal membrane depolarisation
- Voltage-gated calcium channels open
- ACh exocytosis into extracellular space mediated by calcium
- ACh and nicotinic receptor interaction
- Conformational change
- Na+ influx, K+ efflux from muscle cell
- AP generated if receptor generator potentials pass threshold
- AP propagation through muscle
- Ca2+ release from sarcoplasmic reticulum
- Muscle contraction
How do you measure action potential? How do you measure muscle contraction/ How do you terminate ACh action? How do you deactivate ACh release?
Electrophysical recordings
- Electrophysical recordings
- In vivo or ex vivo
- Record before, during or after motor neuron stimulation
Enzyme acetylcholine esterase
Enzymic hydrolysis in synaptic cleft
What is quantal exocytosis?
- Small ACh quanta release at rest
- Bind to nicotinic receptors
- Small membrane depolarisation
- 0.4mV miniature epp
- Increased ACh release detection capacity
What is personality? What are the two types?
Individual differences in thinking, feeling and behaviour patterns Type A = hostile, aggressive, impatient
Type B = relaxed, live in the moment
What are the big 5 (OCEAN)?
Openness to experience
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
What are the links between OCEAN and smoking? What are the links between OCEAN and healthy living?
+ N and + O = + cigarette use
+ N = higher lifetime smoker risk
+ O = low lifetime smoker risk
+ C = better lifestyle
What are the main aspects of high N, E, C and A?
+ N = + health worries
+ E = + risk taking
+ C = + worry about effect of behaviour on others
+ A = + optimistic, + trust in people
Shontz’s model stages of reaction to diagnosis?
- Shock
- Encounter reaction (emotions, anger)
- Retreat (denial)
- Reality
What is the crisis theory? What are the order of events?
Describes factors which influence process of adjustment / adaptation to a diagnosis
- Background factors
- Cognitive appraisal
- Adaptive tasks / coping
What external factors influence illness appraisal?
- Stability
- Prognosis
- Visibility
- Physical impairment
- Pain
What patients factors influence illness appraisal?
- Age
- Social class
- Gender
- Psychological resources
- Self-blame
What are the ways to self-manage a chronic illness?
- Lifestyle change
- Medication use
- Adjusting to symptoms
- Maintaining good relationship with practitioner
What are the 2 emotional response categories? What is problem focused coping? What is emotion focused coping?
- Avoidance and inhibition of emotions
- Acceptance and expression of emotions
Reduce demands / increase resources
Minimise emotional response (drinking, drugs)
What are the properties of RNA?
- Single stranded
- Helical, right-handed structure
- Van der Waal and base stacking
- Strong purines
- reactive than DNA
- rRNA, tRNA, mRNA
- DNA-dependent RNA polymerases for production