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Muscular System

  • Page ID
    184611
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    Muscles allow for movement such as walking, and they also facilitate bodily processes such as respiration and digestion. The body contains three types of muscle tissue: skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle, and smooth muscle.

     The skeletal muscle cells are long and appear striated due to the arrangement of their myofilaments. Each cell has multiple nuclei. Smooth muscle cells have no striations and only one nuclei per cell. Cardiac muscle cells are striated but have only one nucleus. The cells are arranged in branching bundles.
    The body contains three types of muscle tissue: skeletal muscle, smooth muscle, and cardiac muscle. Notice that skeletal muscle cells are long and cylindrical, they have multiple nuclei, and the small, dark nuclei are pushed to the periphery of the cell. Smooth muscle cells are short, tapered at each end, and have only one nucleus each. Cardiac muscle cells are also cylindrical, but short. The cytoplasm may branch, and they have one or two nuclei in the center of the cell. (credit: modification of work by NCI, NIH; scale-bar data from Matt Russell)

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