Katelynn Nguyen

Lena Nguyen, Jenifer Pham, Tina Vu

Period 2
Excitable Tissues

Purpose: Distinguish between muscle tissue and nervous cells.

Background Research: Excitable tissues are tissues that react to electricity/chemicals where the
tissues do not just burn like with connective or epithelial tissues. Excitable tissues are
categorized into two: muscle and nervous. There are three categories of muscle tissues: smooth,
skeletal, and cardiac. Both skeletal and cardiac are striated meaning that the two contain internal
structure of highly organized myofilaments, as opposed to the smooth muscle being the least
organized of the three. With nervous tissues, they divide into cells instead.

Prediction: I predict that one can distinguish between muscle tissues and nervous cells by the
way they look. Muscle tissues have three categories: cardiac, skeletal, and smooth. Skeletal and
cardiac can be distinguished because they are striated (highly organized with lines) and smooth
muscle tissues are the opposite since they are the least organized. Nervous cells can be identified
due to their bundle of axons (looks almost like wires).

Methods: Obtain slides from instructor. Obtain microscope and examine each slide. Take
pictures of each slide for data (label each picture). When done, put the slides back into the box
and turn off microscopes.
Data:
Analysis:
1. Why are skeletal and cardiac muscle called “striated,” whereas smooth muscle is not?
Skeletal and cardiac muscle are called “striated” because of the longitudinally striped
appearance. The feature differentiating the muscles from smooth muscle would be the dark lines
that run across the tissue between cells. This is because cardiac and skeletal are organized, but
the smooth muscle in comparison is not as organized.

2. How can you distinguish between skeletal and cardiac muscle?

You can distinguish between skeletal and cardiac muscle in that the cells of cardiac muscle are
more branching (due to the muscle being a bit less organized) than skeletal muscle. The skeletal
muscle cells are longer than the cells of the cardiac muscle.

Conclusion: The purpose of the epithelial tissue lab was to distinguish between the muscle
tissues and nucleus cells. The data I got for the lab are the pictures shown above, each in 40x,
depicting both muscle tissues and nervous cells. The smooth muscle (nonstriated) was easiest to
distinguish just because it was different from the other two muscle since the muscle is not
striated. The data shows me nervous cells have axons that branch out (looks like wires) whilst
muscle tissues are more organized in appearance with smooth muscle being the least (hence why
it is nonstriated). The data is relevant to answering the problem of the lab because it depicts how
to discern between the nervous cells and muscle tissues visually by means of the appearance of
the tissues (uniform/organized = striated) and cells (branching out). In terms of improving the
lab, perhaps if we had the chance to observe the cells/tissues through a higher magnification.

Link:
http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/ap/histology_mh/strimusc.html