gap junctions are important in smooth muscle. when absent, as in the iris of the eye, what new characteristic does the smooth muscle fibers take on?



Answer :

When absent, as in the iris of the eye, the smooth muscle fibers contract individually. There are gap junctions in both cardiac and smooth muscle.

While the ciliary muscle of the human and monkey eyes lacks gap connections, the iris sphincter does. Gap junctions are membrane channels that facilitate the flow of ions and tiny metabolites from one cell to another. Gap junctions are crucial for impulse conduction in the heart muscle. The connexins are a multigene family that has been implicated in the last ten years worth of research in explaining how gap junctions are encoded. Gap junctions are collections of intercellular channels that permit ions and tiny molecules to diffuse directly between neighboring muscle cells.

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