LPT 321: Meat Science (1+1)

GROSS STRUCTURE

• A meat animal possesses as many as 600 distinct muscles.
• Variations exist in respect of size and shape (triangular fan like or fusiform; long or short; broad or narrow) in the attachments (bones, cartilages, or ligaments); in blood or nerve supply; in association with other tissue; and in their action (fast, slow or intermittent) among muscles.
• These variations allow muscles to perform various type of movement ranging from gross as in the case of movement of limbs to very fine as in the case of eyes.
• However a basic structural pattern is common to every muscle, despite the variations listed above.
• Skeletal muscles are also known to as striated muscles as they appear as parallel striations of alternating light and dark bands.
• Muscles are composed of individual cells referred to as muscles fibres, which in turn is made up myofibrils, which in turn is composed of myofilaments.