Muscular System

1) Functions of Muscle
- Produce Movement
- Maintain posture
- Stabilize Joints
- Generate Heat

2) Types of muscles
- Smooth
- Cardiac
- Skeletal

a. Criteria for Muscles

i. Excitability – responds to stimulus and contracts

ii. Conductivity – has special membrane that conducts electricity
iii. Extensibility (stretching) and elasticity (returning to normal shape)

3) Attachments and coverings (from largest to smallest) (connective tissue)

a. Muscular Fascia
 Superficial to the epinysium
 Seperates individual muscles or groups
 Create tendons (attach muscle to bone) or aponeuroses (a fibrous sheet
that attaches bone or other muscle)

b. Epimysium
 Covers the entire muscle under fascia like tough leather sleeve

c. Perimysium
 Surrounds groups of mucle fibers (cells) called fascicles

d. Endomysium
 Wispy sheet that covers individual muscle fibers/ cells

4) Skeletal muscle fiber - basics

  Single long cylindrical cell that contracts
 Extend full length of muscle with many nuclei
 Number of fibers stays relatively constant after birth although their size
can change with exercise
 The plasma membrane is called the sarcolemma just under the
endomysium
 The cytoplasm of the cell is called sarcoplasm and has many
mitochondria, glycogen granules and specialized SER
 Smooth Endoplasmic Reticulum (SER) - Sarcoplasmic reticulumn
have an end portion called the terminal cisternae which hold CA2+ ion
 Transvere tubule or T tubules are created by invaginations of the
sarcolemma at regular intervals that lead down to the 9

5) Neuromuscular Junction

 Electrical nerve signals travel along the axon towards the axon terminal
 The axon branches extensively (called collaterals) and “touches” a skeletal muscle
fiber creating a synapse
 Between the Axon terminal and the motor end plate (muscle cell) there is a
gap called the synaptic cleft
 Communication across the cleft is done by neurotransmitters, in this case
Acetylcholine (Ach)
 In the axon terminal there are synaptic vesicles that contain ACh
 The electrical impulse causes extracellular Ca2+ to flood into the synapse which
triggers some of the vesicles to fuse with the membrane and ACh diffuses across
the synaptic cleft
 The motor end plate has receptors

6) Sarcomere – Functional unit of the muscle cell

 A muscle fiber is long and composed of several rope like myofibrils

 The myofibrils contain distinct repeating units called sarcomeres which are
functional unit of muscle
 During contractions each sarcomere shortens a bit creating an overall contraction
of the muscle
 Each sarcomere has a set of myofilaments that create contractions
 i. Myofilaments
 Thread like fibers that lie parallel to each other
 80% of muscle volume is filaments

1. Actin
 Thin filaments
 have binding sites (active sites)
 Attached to the actin filament are 2 other proteins
i. Tropomyosin
 Spirals the actin filament
 Helps stiffen actin
 Blocks myosin/actin binding sites

ii. Troponin
 Binds Tropomyosin to actin
 Binds to Ca2+ when it is available and
changes shape, dragging the tropomyosin off
the actin/myosin binding sites and exposing
them

2. Myosin
- Thick Filament
- Have a head group

b. Banding patters – Very organized myofilaments create striations

 Ends of the sarcomeres are called Z lines or Z discs

 I bands (light bands) are thin actin filaments attached to ends of the
sarcomere at the z line
 A bands (dark bands) consist of thick myosin filaments overlapping with
thin actin filaments
 H zone - consists of only myosin filaments
 M line is in the middle of the H zone and has the protein Titin (one of
largest known proteins at 27 000 amino acids)that hold the thick filaments
in place and acts like a spring allowing the sarcomere to stretch and recoil
7) Transmission of the stimulus to the muscle fiber

 The sarcoplasmic reticulum has lots of intracellular Ca 2+ ions and upon

stimulation becomes permeable to them and they diffuse out and start contraction

8) Sliding filament Theory

Excitation

a. Stimulation of somatic motor neuron

b. ACh is released at the neuromuscular junction
c. ACh binds to receptor – causes excitation of motor end plate
d. Muscle is excited (produces action potential) and this excitation
spreads into muscle via t-tubules
e. Causes Ca++ to be released from Sarcoplasmic Reticulum (Terminal
Cisternae)
f. Ca++ binds to troponin, displacing tropomyosin which exposes active
sites on actin
g. myosin head  energizes cross bridge formation (locking of myosin
head into actin active site) = power stroke
h. ATP detaches myosin from actin and resets (activates) the myosin
head
i. Stimulation ends

Relaxation

a. Stimulation ends
b. ACh is degraded by AChE (acetylcholinesterase) in synaptic cleft
c. Action potential is no longer traveling t-tubules (signal to pump Ca++
back into Sarcoplasmic Reticulum) – uses ATP in active transport
d. Troponin resumes original shape moving tropomyosin blocking active
site on actin
e. Myosin unable to bind to actin = no contraction
9) Smooth Muscle

a. Smooth Muscle Fibers

 Elongated with tapering ends

 Actin and myosin are organized more randomly than in skeletal (no striations)
 Can grow in size (like heart and skeletal muscle) but can also grow more cells
by mitosis

 2 types of smooth

o Visceral smooth muscle

 In sheets
 Most common type
 Fibers can stimulate each other so once fiber stimulated the
impulse moves and excites adjacent fibers etc
 Can also display rhythmicity – a pattern of self-exciting fibers
that create repeated contractions
 Creates wave like motion of peristalsis

o Multiunit smooth muscles

 Cells are not organized in sheets but separate

 Contract in response to hormone or motor nerve stimuli
 In irises of eye and walls of blood vessels

b. Contraction

 ACh and norepinephrine are neurotransmitters in smooth

 Each stimulates contractions in some muscles and inhibits contractions in
others
 Slower to contract and relax than skeletal but can maintain contractions for
longer
 Muscle cells can stretch without changing tautness
 10) Cardiac Muscle

 In heart
 Branching, striated cells interconnected in 3D networks
 Intercalated discs
o Strong join of cells (desmosomes – Anchor proteins)
o Allow signal to pass from one cell to the next for smooth contraction (Gap
junctions from cell to cell)
 Only do aerobic respiration (very oxygen intensive)

List of muscles to know for tests and exams – McKinley

Test questions could include which muscles moves what bone using the term extension etc.

Just in case we don’t finish in class I have a recording of this last section -
https://screenpal.com/watch/c06YrJVEqbc

Fig 11.1 a,b

The following is a list of muscles is covered in poke a muscle (not as extensive a list)

Head:

1. Frontalis (frontal belly)

2. Masseter
3. Orbicularis oculi
4. Zygomaticus
5. Orbicularis oris
6. Sternocleidomastoid
7. Temporalis
Body

1. Internal Intercostal – not shown

2. External Intercostal - not shown
3. Latissimus dorsi
4. Trapezius
5. Pectoralis Major
6. Serratus anterior
7. External oblique
8. Rectus abdominis
9. Erector spinae – not shown
Arm

1. Deltoids
2. Biceps brachii
3. Triceps brachii
4. Brachioradialis
Leg:

1. Vastus medialis
2. Rectus femoris
3. Sartorius
4. Vastus lateralis
5. Tibialis anterior
6. Biceps femoris
7. Gastrocnemius
8. Calcaneal tendon
9. Gluteus maximus
10. Soleus
.