explain the structure of cardiac muscles?
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Answer:
Cardiac muscle is striated muscle that is present only in the heart. Cardiac muscle fibers have a single nucleus, are branched, and joined to one another by intercalated discs that contain gap junctions for depolarization between cells and desmosomes to hold the fibers together when the heart contracts.
cardiac muscles are composed of branched fibresthe branches join to form a network .each fibres or cell is surrounded by sarcoplasm and has cytoplasm (sarcolemma) with longitudinal mycofibrins and a centrally located nucleus (i.e. each cell is uninucleate) the microfibrils have transverse faint dark and light bands, which alternate with each other.
In addition these muscle fibres show densely stained cross bands called intercalated discs having communication junctions at intervals . the intercalated discs are specialized region of cell membrane of two adjacent fibres. the intercalated discs functions are booster of contradiction wave and permit the wave of muscle contraction to be transmitted from one cardiac fibre to another so all the fibres contract as a unit.