Friday, December 17, 2010

Skeletal Muscle Tissue

This is a picture of a typical but very complicated skeletal muscle tissue. This picture is a very basic view, there are actually a lot more to go with this, but for now I will discuss the basics to this muscle. This tissue is key to being move, when it contracts or expands it allows us to move. Skeletal muscles are often called voluntary muscle since its the only type you can control subconsciously, and is responsible for your overall body mobility. It is also the main component in keeping our body warm. As it contracts rapidly it produces heat, and we store this heat to keep us warm. There are hundreds of tiny parts to this muscle that result in our movement, here are a few of the important ones and what they actually do.

The Fascicle - The fascicle is part of the muscle that is a discrete bundle of muscle cells, it is actually segregated from the rest of the muscle by a connective tissue sheath. It is surrounded by a perimysium.
Muscle Fiber - It is an elongated multi nucleate cell, which has striations, which is basically just a series of color changes in bands. It is surrounded by the endomysium.
Myofibril - It is a complex organelle composed of bundles of myofilaments, they occupy most of the muscle cell volume, and appear banded, like striations. It is composed of sarcomeres arranged from end to end.
Sarcomere - It is a segment of a Myofibril. The contractile unit, composed of myofilaments.
Myofilament - It is an extended macromlecular structure that has thick and thin filament that contain bundled myosin molecules. The thin filaments contain actin molecules as well as proteins.

This is basically the larger and more detailed version of the picture above, but shows a lot more of the tissue that I have no idea what they do. But they all contribute to our body movement in one way or another.

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