Chapter 4: Muscle
Keywords
Please familiarize yourself with these keywords before you start reading the chapter:
- Cardiac muscle
- A type of striated muscle found specifically in the heart or myocardium.
- Intercalated disc
- A structure specific to cardiac muscle formed from gap junctions and desmosomes that allow cardiac muscle cells to contract in a coordinated fashion.
- Myofibers
- The term for a muscle cell. Applies to skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle and smooth muscle.
- Myofibrils
- The tube like organelle present in skeletal muscle and cardiac muscle that coordinates contraction of the cell.
- Purkinje fibers
- Modified cardiomyocytes that propagate electrical signals through the cardiac muscle of the myocardium allowing coordinated contraction.
- Sarcomere
- The basic functional unit of striated muscle that is composed of myofilaments.
- Sarcoplasmic reticulum
- The organelle that is responsible for the storage and release of calcium into the cytosol of the myofiber.
- Skeletal muscle
- A type of striated muscle responsible for voluntary movement.
- Smooth muscle
- Non-striated muscle that is responsible for involuntary movement within several organ systems.
- T tubules
- Invaginations of the sarcolemma (cell membrane) into the cell that allows for the conduction of depolarization impulses from the outside of the cell to around the sarcomeres.
