1 Muscular System & Muscular Biopolymers

Biology for Engineers- Unit 2 – Muscular system Jan 28, 2019
Muscular System
Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Adult body possess 700 muscles!!

 The muscular system is made up of muscle tissues
 Specialized, complex connective tissue that undergoes contraction and relaxation to
facilitate motion
 Physiological processes and all dynamic interactions with environment involve muscles
 Contribute to 40-45% of the total body mass
 Maintenance of posture, locomotion, support, and control of various circulatory systems
(beating of heart, movement of food along the digestive system, etc.)
 The muscular system is often closely associated with the skeletal system in facilitating
movement

Types of Muscle tissues

Basic properties of a muscle tissue

Excitability
Conductivity
Respond to
Ability to
chemicals
propagate Elasticity received from
electrical Ability to nerve cells
signals return to
original shape
Extensibility after
Contractility
Ability to be stretching Ability to
stretched shorten and
with out generate
damage force

Skeletal muscles anatomy

 Attached to bones/skin
 Under conscious control
 40% of body is skeletal muscle
 Skeletal muscle fibers are very large (100µm diameter; 30 cm length)
Longest muscle Smallest muscle

Skeletal muscle organization
 Each skeletal muscle cell, also called a muscle fiber

 Plasma membrane of muscles called as sarcolemma
 Cytoplasm of muscles called as sarcoplasm
 Sarcoplasmic reticulum store house of Ca2+ ions
 Each muscle fibre possess multiple units of myofibril
 Functional unit of muscle fiber is sarcomere
 It is highly organized with actin, myosin filaments and
other accessory proteins
 Actin filament-Thin; Myosin filament-Thick

Human muscle fiber and fiber optics have same organization?

Sarcomere organization- striped or striated appearance

How does muscles get notified to contract?

Muscle fiber first responds to signaling by the motor neuron

How does muscles get

notified to contract?

Sliding filament mechanism

of muscle contraction

Smooth muscles- lines your digestive system

 They are involuntary muscle controlled by autonomic nervous system
 It is chiefly found in the walls of hollow organs and tubes (ex: stomach and
intestines)
 SMC is composed of spindle-shaped cells arranged in sheets
 The cells lack T-tubules and possess less sarcoplasmic reticulum.
 The SMC cells do not contain sarcomeres (not striated)
 They contain thick & thin myofilaments.
 Thin filaments in smooth muscle do not contain troponin.
 Calcium does not bind to troponin but, rather, to a protein called
calmodulin.
 The calcium-calmodulin complex 'activates' myosin which then binds to
actin & contraction begins.
 It doesn’t get fatigued.
Types of smooth muscles

How smooth muscles look when they work

Smooth muscles in action- Peristalsis

Cardiac Muscles never fatigue!!!

 They contract involuntarily, rhythmically and
doesn’t fatigue
 Cardiac muscles have great blood supply and are
designed specifically to avoid becoming fatigued
 Intercalated disc provides a strong cell-cell
cohesion that consequently helps in transmitting a
force/tension at one end to the other end
(necessary in heart)
 Intercalated discs line helps in uniform contraction
(contract as single mass)
 Contraction occurs via Ca2+ and troponin
mechanism with intermediate contraction speed

Injuries eat muscles- Can muscles regenerate?

 Skeletal muscle has the capability of regenerating lost tissue on its own, except to restore significant loss
 Frequent reasons for skeletal muscle injuries are high-energy traffic accidents, blast trauma, combat injuries, surgical
and orthopedic situations (e.g., after compartment syndrome or tumor resection), or contusion injury during sports
that lead to an acute muscle tissue loss
 Approximately 35–55% of sport injuries involve muscle damage at the myofiber level
 Those injuries that involve 20% or more of muscle loss of the respective muscle mass need reconstructive surgical
procedures
 Up to a certain threshold, skeletal muscle has the capability of regenerating lost tissue upon injury. Beyond this
threshold, the remaining muscle tissue is unable to fully regenerate its function
 This loss of skeletal muscle with lasting functional impairment is defined as “volumetric muscle loss” (VML)
 Requires external clinical intervention for combating the loss of functional muscle tissue

How can I repair the damaged/lost muscle tissue?

 We can grow muscle tissue in lab (in vitro)- Tissue Engineering
 We become the creator (almighty) to design and create living tissue
 Feed the muscle cells/ stem cells isolated from donors with glucose
(food), liquid medium (replicate body conditions) and CO2 for
maintaining pH
 Supply a space/matrix for the cells to grow (by scaffolds)
 Scaffolds are made up of biopolymers which interact with cells
 Supply them with signals for making stem cells into muscle cells
(growth factors)
 Cells feed, multiply and mature into muscle cells
 Transplant the tissue into damaged area in the body
 Functional integration is achieved

We can grow muscles in lab and patch it back/ implant only

scaffolds
Cellular approach
(with cells)
Acellular approach
(with out cells)

Muscle biopolymers
 Biopolymers are polymers synthesized by living organisms
 Biopolymers can be polynucleotides (such as the nucleic acids DNA and RNA), polypeptides (that is, proteins) or
polysaccharides (that is, polymeric carbohydrates)
 Fibrin, collagen, alginate, hyaluronic acid, and mammalian ECM have been used as substrates for cell-scaffold or acellular
skeletal muscle tissue replacement
 Synthetic polymers such as poly(e-caprolactone; PCL), polylactic-co-glycolic acid(PGA), copolymer poly-lactide-co-glycolide
(PLG), and polyaniline (PANI) are widely explored. Besides them, elastomeric polymers (e.g., polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS),
polyurethane) are also used

Muscles are electroactive- choose polymer accordingly
 Electroactive Polymers (EAPs) represent a broad family of so-called ‘smart materials’ that are capable of
transducing energy from the electrical to the mechanical form, and vice versa
 EAPs respond to electrical stimulation with a significant shape or size change
Two types of EAPS:

 ionic EAPs (whose actuation is based on diffusions of ions and solvents)
 electronic EAPs (whose actuation is based on electronic charging of the material)

Classification of EAPs

Ionic polymer-metal composite

 Ionic polymer– metal composite (IPMC) is an EAP that bends in response to an electrical activation as a
result of mobility of cations in the polymer network
 These polymeric membranes swell in solvents and are hydrophilic
 This gives rise to the ability of the membrane of swelling in water, which can be controlled in an electric
field, due to the ionic nature of the membrane
 By placing two electrodes in close proximity of the membrane and applying a low voltage forced transport
of ions within a solution through the membrane becomes possible at microscopic level
 The occurring local swelling and de-swelling of the membrane can be controlled, depending on the polarity
of the nearby electrode

Let us study how EAPs (ex: IPMC) work?

When a small potential is applied to the electrodes in the presence of a solvent like water, the hydrated
cations move toward the cathode side, and as a result the IPMC bends toward the anode side due to the
volume difference between the two sides
Nafion/Pt
Impulse drives muscle contraction

Voltage diff drives membrane bending

Why are we learning about muscle biopolymers?
Tissue correction
To construct biologically similar muscular tissue (bioengineered) and support tissue
regeneration following trauma
Tissue mimicry
To explore them in biomimetics as interesting passive alternative to active biological
muscle. This advancement is actively useful in robotics and prosthetics

What biological concepts are known about muscles which can be

extracted to solve an engineering problem?
 Muscles contract and relax in response to electrical impulse

 Muscles are highly elastic under physiological limit

How can we translate this biological knowledge to solve an engineering

question?
 An actuator is a type of motor that is responsible for moving or
Question: Can artificial controlling a mechanism or system.
muscles be used to  It is operated by a source of energy, typically electric current, hydraulic
replace actuators? fluid pressure, or pneumatic pressure, and converts that energy into
motion.

How about replacing multiple actuators in wings of plane with EAPs?
Complex systems Simple and efficient

Artificial actuators cannot and should not behave

exactly like biological muscle tissue in all aspects.
 Power source
 Environmental conditions
 Material and microstructure
 Response to stimulation
 Fatigue
Actuators should reproduce characteristics only that

are beneficial for the application.

Muscles inspired wings

 Wing-shaped sheets of the material
sandwiched between two metal grids
 A computer control system will supply
voltage to the electrodes
 By applying different voltage levels to
different portions of the sheet, we can make
it change its shape to flap

Dielectric elastomers as artificial muscles
 DE actuators (DEA) transform electric energy into mechanical

work
 They are lightweight and have a high elastic energy density
 Soft and thin membrane sandwiched with two compliant
electrodes
 A voltage applied on a DE film along its thickness results in a
membrane expansion
 Used in artificial muscles, adaptive optics, bioinspired robots,
medical devices, and energy harvesters
 Better than biological muscles

Dielectric elastomers replaces traditional actuators in robots

 Traditional robots are designed to mimic the basic functions of organisms using mechanical transmission and
motor
 DE actuators can be easily designed and tailored to form various shapes and the desired deformation modes
electropneumatic artificial tricep muscle
To bend the elbow like neutral stimuli, the DEAM can be actuated using voltage

Tiny twisting muscles for propelling nanobots

• Possibility of treating medical conditions using nanobots - tiny robots
• Challenge is how to propel these bots in the blood stream?
• Artificial muscle is a strand of tough, flexible yarn made from carbon nanotubes that
have been twisted together
• Resembles muscle present in elephant trunk
• It is immersed in liquid electrolytes and when voltage is applied, the yarn draws in
electrolytes, causing it to increase in volume
• This in turn causes it to untwist itself, rotating at up to 600 revolutions per minute
• If the voltage is changed, the yarn then proceeds to discharge the electrolytes
• In doing so, it is able to twist itself back up, rotating in the opposite direction

The back-and-forth spinning of such a yarn motor attached to a flagellum could cause the tail to wiggle in
circles, pushing the nanobot through its liquid environment
Display the
video for better
understanding
Carbon nanotube yarn (twisted)

Cyborg heart patch to release drugs

 The patch contracts and expands like human heart tissue but
regulates itself like a machine.
 Capable for remote monitoring.
 It will also be able to release drugs from the patch directly onto
the heart
 Owing to electrostatic interactions with the negatively charged
polymeric backbone, the positively charged protein could be
stored within the hydrogel matrix.
 On application of electrical stimulation the gel will be protonated
and microscopically shrunk and the protein could be released into
the hydrogel’s microenvironment or surroundings in a voltage-
dependent manner.
 Alternating the electrical stimulation showed an on/off release
profile of the protein from the devices into the cellular
compartment.

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Biology for Engineers- Unit 2 – Muscular system Jan 28, 2019

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Adult body possess 700 muscles!!

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Types of Muscle tissues

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Basic properties of a muscle tissue

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Skeletal muscles anatomy

Longest muscle Smallest muscle

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Skeletal muscle organization

 Each skeletal muscle cell, also called a muscle fiber

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Human muscle fiber and fiber optics have same organization?

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Sarcomere organization- striped or striated appearance

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

How does muscles get notified to contract?

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

How does muscles get

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Sliding filament mechanism

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Smooth muscles- lines your digestive system

Types of smooth muscles

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

How smooth muscles look when they work

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Smooth muscles in action- Peristalsis

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Cardiac Muscles never fatigue!!!

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Injuries eat muscles- Can muscles regenerate?

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

How can I repair the damaged/lost muscle tissue?

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

We can grow muscles in lab and patch it back/ implant only

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Muscles are electroactive- choose polymer accordingly

Two types of EAPS:

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Ionic polymer-metal composite

result of mobility of cations in the polymer network

 These polymeric membranes swell in solvents and are hydrophilic

field, due to the ionic nature of the membrane

of the nearby electrode

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Let us study how EAPs (ex: IPMC) work?

Impulse drives muscle contraction

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

Why are we learning about muscle biopolymers?

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

What biological concepts are known about muscles which can be

 Muscles contract and relax in response to electrical impulse

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

How can we translate this biological knowledge to solve an engineering

 An actuator is a type of motor that is responsible for moving or

Question: Can artificial controlling a mechanism or system.

muscles be used to  It is operated by a source of energy, typically electric current, hydraulic

Saravanan Sekaran, Ph.D.

How about replacing multiple actuators in wings of plane with EAPs?

1 Muscular System & Muscular Biopolymers

1 Muscular System & Muscular Biopolymers