Three Kinds of Muscle · Muscles
All three types contract the same way underneath.
Three muscle types, three personalities — but crack any of them open and you find the same machinery: actin and myosin, sliding past each other, triggered by calcium.
What differs is arrangement and control. Skeletal muscle lines its machinery up in neat rows (the stripes) and waits for a nerve. Cardiac does the same but wires its cells together. Smooth muscle scatters the machinery diagonally, which is why it has no stripes and contracts more slowly.
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