Action Potential Muscle Contraction?
describe all the events that occur in the muscle cell during muscle contraction in the order in which they take place starting at a point immediately after an action potential is generated at the motor end plate of a skeletal muscle cell.
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The following steps are involved in muscle contraction :
(1) The sequence of events leading to contraction is initiated somewhere in the central nervous system, either as voluntary activity from the brain or as reflex activity from the spinal cord.
(2) A motor neuron in the ventral hornof the spinal cord is activated, and an action potential passes outward in a ventral root of the spinal cord.
(3) The axon branches to supply a number of muscle fibers called a motor unit, and the action potential isconveyed to a motor end plate on each muscle fiber.
(4) At the motor end plate, the action potential causes the release of packets or quanta of acetylcholine into the synaptic clefts on the surface of the muscle fiber.
(5) Acetylcholine causes the electrical resting potential under the motor end plate to change, and this then initiates an action potential which passes in both directions along the surface of the muscle fiber.
(6) At the opening of each transverse tubule onto the muscle fiber surface, the action potential spreads inside the muscle fiber.
(7) At each point where a transverse tubule touches part of the sarcoplasmic reticulum, it causes the sarcoplasmic reticulum to release Ca ++ ions.
(8) The calcium ions result in movement of troponin and tropomyosin on their thin filaments, and this enables the myosin moleculeheads to "grab and swivel" their way along the thin filament. This is the driving force of muscle contraction .