Question

Consider four preparations, each with a chamber containing a mystery muscle fibre connected to a force transducer and a stimulating electrode. You are able to:

• Stimulate the muscle fibre and cause an action potential
• Vary stimulation frequency and amplitude
• Measure the contractile force of the muscle fibre but NOT the duration (don’t ask me why. You bought the cheapest force transducer they had at K-Mart).
• Change the composition of the artificial extracellular fluid in the muscle chamber i.e. add or remove ions. You may ‘reset’ this between experiments.

Each of the four preparations contain a different type of muscle fiber:

• A slow-twitch skeletal muscle fibre
• A fast-twitch skeletal muscle fibre
• A cardiac contractile cell
• A cardiac autorhythmic cell

Describe how you would go about determining which type of muscle fibre is in the chamber. There is no one correct answer to this, but you must describe your reasoning in the context of Physiology.

I'm confused about how to differ skeletal muscle and cardiac muscle. Urgent help needed!

Answer 1

Please see below the Physiology Characteristic difference between the two

For skeletal muscle, when you conduct the experiment, the response would be like the following

For Cardiac Muscle differences when you conduct the experiment look for the following movement