How do muscle cells work?

1 Answer
May 31, 2017

Skeletal muscles (which can be controlled by your conscious mind) work by sliding filaments over each other, smooth muscles work by twisting their nucleus and cardiac muscles, also with filaments sliding over eachother

Explanation:

Skeletal muscle cells are long strands with sarcomeres. The little " feet" of the brown filaments (myosin) in the image pull the actin filaments toward each other.

http://www.doctorshangout.com/profiles/blogs/sarcomere

Skeletal muscles tend to be stronger than smooth muscles, but require much more ATP to function.

As you can see in the next image, the cells are ordered neatly next to each other. You can see the clear stripes within the muscle cells, which indicate multiple units of the above image.

enter image source here

Smooth muscle cells are long cells (by far not as long as skeletal muscle cells) These muscle] cells contract by twisting their entirety, including the nucleus.

http://faculty.etsu.edu/forsman/histologyofmuscleforweb.htm

Cardiac muscles are similar to skeletal muscles, as they contain the same sarcomeres the skeletal muscles do. A key difference between cardiac muscle and skeletal muscle is that the cardiac muscles contract involuntarily.

The cardiac muscle cells have a lot of extra connections between them, the intercalated discs, to withstand the stress of continuous contraction.

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/cardiac-muscle-with-intercalated-discs-high-res-stock-photography/139815030