Lec 20
Musculoskeletal SYstem
Types of skeleton
Hydrostatic- based on liquid
Found in soft bodied invertebrates
Circular and longitudinal muscles contract against extracellular liquid (incompressible)
Exoskeleton- complete outside of the body, arthropods
Hardened outer surface where muscles attach- made of chitin (protein and carbohydrate)
trapdoor spider
weevil
trap jaw ant, generated escape jump by closing its jaws on the ground
Muscles caused joint segments of exoskeleton to move
Drawback?... cannot grow. Have to shed.
Increased predation risk
Absence of hard support to pull against
Endoskeleton- inside of body, bony often derived from cartilage
Can grow with organism
Develops from cartilaginous template (endochondral bone, hardened or ossified)
Many components needed for construction
Osteoblasts- cells that lay down new matrix (blasting new bone)
Matrix- gelatinous substance that contains calcium phosphate (eventually hardened part of bone)
Collagen fibers
Osteoclasts- cells that dissolve bone
Bones are dynamic organs!
Healing from a bone break- balance between osteoblasts and osteoclasts
Two general categories of skeleton
Axial- skull, vertebral column, sternum, ribs
Appendicular- pectoral girdle, pelvic girdle, arms, legs, hands, feet
Formation of cartilaginous bone
We start off as complete cartilage
Construction of endochondral bone- we get blood vessels (inside long bones is where we make RBC)
How do maximize force or speed?
All the muscles integrate with the skeletons so we can either get force or speed (where fulcrum and load are)
Galapagos islands- darwin's finches
What causes the rapid diversification in beak sizes in Darwin’s finches?
This has to do with the skeleton
Bmp- Bone Morphogenetic Protein
A cytokine (small protein that is important in cell signaling)
Some cells have bmp receptors on their surface that induce some change in the cell
Bmp4 binding may stimulate the production of certain proteins that cause bone proliferation
Scientists tested embryos of darwin's finches and saw variation in bmp4 levels positively correlated with beak size