MUSCULAR TISSUE
There are three types of muscular tissue: skeletal,
cardiac, and smooth .
Although the three types of muscular tissue share
some properties, they differ from one another in
their microscopic anatomy, location, and how they
are controlled by the nervous and endocrine
systems.
Functions of Muscular Tissue
1. Producing body movements. Total body movements such
as walking and running, and localized movements such as grasping a
pencil, keyboarding, or raising your hand, rely on the integrated
functioning of skeletal muscles, bones, and joints.
2. Stabilizing body positions. Skeletal muscle contractions:
stabilize joints and help maintain body positions, such as standing or
sitting.
3. Storing and moving substances within the body.
Sustained contractions of ringlike bands of smooth muscles called
sphincters may prevent outflow of the contents of a hollow organ.
4. Producing heat. As muscular tissue contracts, it also produces
heat, a process called thermogenesis
§ Characteristics of ALL Muscle Cells
Changes--
•Responsiveness (excitability)
– Respond to stimuli with electrical changes; in what cells?
•Conductivity
– 2 Purposes– more than a local electrical change; leading to
muscle contraction
Consequences– of muscles
•Contractility –shortens when stimulated; pull on bones
and other tissues
•Extensibility -- capable of being stretched; in other cells—
What happen?
•Elasticity -- returns to its original resting length after being
stretched
§ Skeletal Muscle
• Voluntary striated muscle usually attached to
bones.
• Each skeletal muscle is a separate organ
composed of hundreds to thousands of skeletal
muscle cells, also called muscle fibers because
of their elongated shapes. Connective tissues
surround muscle fibers and whole muscles, and
carry the blood vessels and nerves that exert their
effects on individual muscle fibers
• Voluntary ? Under conscious control
• A typical skeletal muscle cell/muscle fiber–
length: 3-30 cm long; 100 micrometer in
diameter
Figure
(cell)
Connective Tissue--
• C.T. attachments between muscle and bone
– Endomysium (surrounds each muscle fiber),
• Groups of muscle fibers form bundles wrapped in
a thicker layer of connective tissue ( fascicle)
.
• Collagen fibers (include those structures listed
above) are extensible and elastic
– stretches slightly and recoils when released
– Advantage of stretching– protect m. from injury;
recoiling of m. help to return to resting length
§ Microscopic Anatomy Of Skeletal
Muscle– Key words:
Multinucleate, Striations, Voluntary
The multiple nuclei of a skeletal muscle fiber are located just beneath
the sarcolemma sheath), the plasma membrane of a muscle fiber.
Thousands of tiny invaginations of the sarcolemma, called
transverse tubules (T tubules), tunnel in from the surface toward
the center of each muscle fiber.
Because transverse tubules are open to the outside of the fiber, they are
filled with interstitial fluid.
Muscle action potentials propagate along the sarcolemma and through the
transverse tubules, quickly spreading throughout the muscle fiber.
This arrangement ensures that all the superficial and deep parts of the
muscle fiber become excited by an action potential almost simultaneously.
Fig. 11.2– ONE skeletal muscle fiber-- A (#1)
B--Myofibrils
(protein
bundles)
SR
T-tubule
C--3 types of myofilaments
(proteins)
Skeletal muscle fiber
Myofibrils are built from three kinds of proteins:
(1) contractile proteins(myosin and actin), which
generate force during contraction;
(2) Regulatory proteins(tropomyosin and troponin), which
help switch the contraction process on and off; and
(3) structural proteins, which keep the thick and thin
filaments in the proper alignment, give the myofibril
elasticity and extensibility, and link the myofibrils to the
sarcolemma and extracellular matrix.
§ Skeletal muscle fiber (#3)
• Sarcoplasm (cytoplasm) is filled with
– Myofibrils
– Glycogen– purpose?
– Pigment (myoglobin)—binding oxygen
• Sarcoplasmic reticulum = smooth ER
• network around each myofibril; function? Store
calcium.
• When triggered, Ca will be released from the
2
terminal cisterns into the sarcoplasm, which
triggers muscle contraction.
Skeletal Muscle Fibers
• Multiple flattened nuclei inside cell membrane
– fusion of multiple myoblasts during development
• Sarcolemma – plasma membrane; having
tubular infoldings (transverse (T) tubules) that
penetrate the interior of the cell
– carry electric current to interior of the cell
– This current signals the SR when to release calcium
ions into cytoplasm
§ Three kinds of myofilament –
1. Thick Filaments
• The myosin tail (twisted golf club handles) points
toward the M line in the center of the sarcomere.
Tails of neighboring myosin molecules lie parallel
to one another, forming the shaft of the thick
filament.
• The two projections of each myosin molecule (golf
club heads) are called myosin heads. The heads
project outward from the shaft in a spiraling
fashion, each extending toward one of the six
• thin filaments that surround each thick filament.
SINGLE MYOSIN MOLECULE
Myosin molecules to form thick
filament—see next slide
(partial view)
Full picture of the thick filament—
see next slide
Overlap of Thick and Thin Filaments
Three kinds of myofilament –
2. Thin Filaments regulatory proteins—
• Thin filaments extend from anchoring points within
the Z discs. Their main component is the protein
actin. Individual actin molecules join to form an
actin filament that is twisted into a helix.
• On each actin molecule is a myosin-binding site,
where a myosin head can attach. Smaller amounts of
two regulatory proteins—tropomyosin and troponin
are also part of the thin filament.
• myosin to bind to actin and muscle contraction to
begin.
• In relaxed muscle, myosin is blocked from binding to
actin because strands of tropomyosin cover the
myosin-binding site on actin.
• The tropomyosin strand, in turn, is held in place by
troponin molecules.
• You will soon learn that when calcium ions (Ca 2+)
bind to troponin, it undergoes a change in shape; this
change moves tropomyosin away from myosin-
binding sites on actin, allowing myosin to bind to
actin and muscle contraction to begin.
F actin
Two interwined chains (F actins; in red) are shown.
Three kinds of myofilament –
3. Elastic Filaments (structural proteins)
• In addition to contractile and regulatory
proteins, muscle contains about a dozen
structural proteins, which contribute to the
• alignment, stability, elasticity, and
extensibility of myofibrils.
• Several key structural proteins are titin,
myomesin, nebulin, and dystrophin
§ Contractile & Regulatory Proteins
• Skeletal muscle shortens during contraction because
the thick and thin filaments slide past one another.
The model describing this process is known as the
sliding filament mechanism. Muscle contraction
occurs because myosin heads attach to and “walk”
• along the thin filaments at both ends of a sarcomere,
progressively pulling the thin filaments toward the
M line. As a result, the thin filaments slide inward
and meet at the center of a sarcomere. They may
even move so far inward that their ends overlap.As
the thin filaments slide inward, the Z discs come
closer together, and the sarcomere shortens.
§ Striations = Organization of Filaments
• Striations-- Dark A bands alternating with lighter
I bands
• A band is thick filament region— Dark/Light (Circle one)
– central H band area is lighter, contains no thin filaments
• I band is thin filament region— Dark/Light (Circle one)
– bisected by Z disc protein, anchoring elastic and thin filaments
– from one Z disc (Z line) to the next is a sarcomere
SARCOMERE– contractile unit in a striated muscle
fiber; extending from one Z disc to the next Z disc
Exterior of the
muscle cell
§ Nerve-Muscle Relationships
• Skeletal muscles are innervated by somatic motor
neurons
• Axons reach these muscle fibers
– At its distal end, each axon branches about 200 times;
each branch reaches a different fiber (cell)
• Each motor neuron and all the muscle fibers it
innervates =Motor Units
•Motor neuron
originated from—
A
G
E F B
C
D H
Motor Units
• Def. A motor neuron and the
muscle fibers it innervates
• Small motor units--Fine control
– small motor units contain as few as 3-6 muscle fibers per
nerve fiber
– Example– eye muscle
• Large motor units--Strength control
– gastrocnemius muscle has 1000 fibers per nerve fiber
