Musculoskeletal System - Muscles

TYPES OF MUSCLES
1. Cardiac Muscle:
- when muscle contracts, it reduces space I chambers of heart + pushes blood from heart into blood
vessels
- other than ability to contract, also possess properties of extensibility, elasticity
-> extensibility: ability to stretch
-> elasticity: ability to return to original length after stretched
2. Smooth Muscle: internal organs (eg stomach, intestines) have muscles for movement.
- involuntary, not under conscious control
3. Skeletal Muscle: muscles that move bones + enable us to walk, run, carry out wide range of voluntary
physical activities.
- muscles are under conscious control + attach to bones of skeleton
- contractions of skeletal muscle bring about movement at joints, also give body form & contours +
allow maintain posture
- extensible, elastic

STRUCTURE OF SKELETAL MUSCLE

- muscle cells held together in bundles (eg. Red meat muscle, bundle of cells gives ‘stringy’ look)
- muscle is form of connective tissue – allows adjacent bundles to easily slide over one another as contract
-> sheaths of connective tissue, epimysium also holds bundles together + towards end of muscle they taper +
blend into form tendon

- amount of connective tissue increases with age. Increase in CT thought to contribute to decrease in muscular
strength

STRUCTURE OF SKELETAL MUSCLE FIBRES

- muscle cells lie parallel to eachother
- each muscle cell called muscle fibre, is elongated cylinder with many nuclei
- around cell is thin, transparent plasma membrane, the sarcolemma, containing cytoplasm, sarcoplasm
STRUCTURE OF MYOFIBRILS
- within sarcoplasm of each fibre are threadlike myofibrils – these run parallel to eachother + run length of
fibre
- ~ hundred-thousands of myofibrils in each fibre
- tubular network called sarcoplasmic reticulum surrounds the myofibrils – is storage site for Ca ions released
during muscle contractions
- each myofibril composed of many smaller myofilaments (made of protein) , which are actual units involved in
contraction
- 2 types of myofilaments:
1. thick myofilaments, composed mainly of protein myosin
2. thin filaments, composed mainly of protein actin
- when muscle fibre supplied with sufficient energy (ATP), & activated by nerve impulse, thick + thin protein
filaments slide past eachother in manner that shortens myofibril
- arrangement of filaments within myofibril gives banded effect which gives striated look
-> striations allow myofibrils to be divided into units = sacromeres

SLIDING FILAMENT THEORY

- explains muscles ability to contract
- when contracts, sarcomeres shorten because filaments slide over one another
- middle of thin filaments contain protein disc is called Z lines
-> distance between 2 Z line = sarcomeres
- length of thick filament (myosin) is called A band
- at end of A band, thin + thick filament overlaps
- middle of A band is lighter, contains thick filament only, this region called H zone
- distance between successive thick filaments called I band, only contains thin filaments
- Myofilaments are same length in contracted position as
they were before contraction
- fibril shortened because myofilaments overlap more
- when muscle relaxes, actin+myosin filaments can be pull
pass one another in opposite direction