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Smooth muscle is grouped into two types: single-unit smooth muscle, also known as visceral smooth muscle, and multiunit smooth muscle. Most smooth muscle is of the single-unit type, and is found in the walls of most internal organs (viscera); and lines blood vessels (except large elastic arteries), the urinary tract , and the digestive tract .
The unusual microscopic anatomy of a muscle cell gave rise to its terminology. The cytoplasm in a muscle cell is termed the sarcoplasm; the smooth endoplasmic reticulum of a muscle cell is termed the sarcoplasmic reticulum; and the cell membrane in a muscle cell is termed the sarcolemma. [9] The sarcolemma receives and conducts stimuli.
Vascular smooth muscle cells also play important roles during development, e.g. driving osteocyte differentiation from undifferentiated precursors during osteogenesis. [1] Arteries have a great deal more smooth muscle within their walls than veins, thus their greater wall thickness. This is because they have to carry pumped blood away from the ...
The vas deferens consists of an external adventitial sheath containing blood vessels and nerves, a muscular middle layer composed of three layers of smooth muscle (with a circular muscle layer interposed between two longitudinal muscle layers), and an internal mucosal lining consisting of pseudostratified columnar epithelium (which bears the ...
Mural cells were described for the first time in the late 19th century as contractile cells lining up around the endothelium. In reality, it was a variety of cells that had been observed and bundled up under the common name of Rouget cells. Later studies brought controversy about their contractility, and this remains an elusive point today. [4]
The muscle fiber cells are arranged in 5 to 7 layers of circular and longitudinal smooth muscle with about 50μ in length and contain well-marked, rod-shaped nuclei, which are often slightly curved. Separating the tunica media from the outer tunica externa in larger arteries is the external elastic membrane (also called the external elastic ...
For example, the pronator teres muscle of the forearm. Unipennate muscles have fibres that run the entire length of only one side of a muscle, like a quill pen. For example, the fibularis muscles. Bipennate muscles consist of two rows of oblique muscle fibres, facing in opposite diagonal directions, converging on a central tendon.
A precapillary sphincter is a band of contractile mural cells either classified as smooth muscle or pericytes that adjusts blood flow into capillaries.They were originally described in the mesenteric microcirculation, and were thought to only reside there.