BIOL 221 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Cardiac Muscle Cell, Cardiac Muscle, Myoglobin
10 Feb 2020
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Document Summary
Physically and electrically separating atrial and ventricular musculatures. Helping to spread force of contraction through heart. The fibrous skeleton is the internal connective tissue scaffolding that supports the cardiac myocytes, nerves and blood vessels. The fibrous skeleton is also essential to preventing over-distension and to physically separating the atrial and ventricular musculatures. This separation prevents the electrical impulses from passing directly from the atria to the ventricles. The fibrous skeleton stabilizes the valves, helps spread force of contraction through heart, and helps maintain shape of the heart. Cardiac myocytes can be described as short, branching, striated, uninucleate cells. They contract in the same was as skeletal muscle fibers by the sliding filament mechanism. The have numerous large mitochondria and abundant myoglobin. The intercalated discs are areas that connect cardiac myocytes. In these areas, the plasma membranes form interdigitations within which desmosomes and gap junctions connect the cells.
