The Student Room Group
Competition - post a photo you've taken of nature >>
Competition - post a photo you've taken of nature >>
Competition - post a photo you've taken of nature >>

Transport system

What's the different between muscle fibre and smooth muscle??? (My textbook is confusing me)
Skeletal muscle (which is made up of muscle fibres) is under voluntary control. It acts to move the skeletal system, and we all know what skeletal muscle looks like!

Smooth muscle is under involuntary control. Instead of being made up of organised, repeating units of sarcomeres, it's made up of a more "gloopy" collection of contractile cells that don't have the obvious direction that skeletal muscle fibres do. Instead of each contractile cell being innervated independently, smooth muscle has small groups of cells independently and rely on the action potential propagating through the smooth muscle via gap junctions.
A good example is the following;

An example of smooth muscle is the muscle which makes that embarrassing noise when your stomach is empty and you have people sitting next to you on both ends. :redface:

Skeletal is used in what you control like when you go to pick up anything such as a pencil, laptop or even weights if you weight lift. =).

I know Hype explained this well enough but, I thought I would throw in an example to make it easy to remember. =l
Reply 3
Avatar for Dynamo123
Dynamo123
7
Original post by AnotherMalala
What's the different between muscle fibre and smooth muscle??? (My textbook is confusing me)

To give further explanation, you know that every tissue is composed of cells. In the case of muscle tissue, the cells are basically called muscle fibers, which contain a lot of myofilaments of actin and myosin. This is true for the voluntary or the skeletal muscles in the body, which are named on the basis of their actions on the skeletal system of the body.
Smooth muscles are a different type of muscle. Basically they consist of cells connected rather irregularly, and they are supplied by the autonomic nervous system. That is to say, they are not under your control. An example is the muscles that cause erection of the hairs at the back of your neck when you read something scary :biggrin:

Quick Reply

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you