Tubocurare Lab Report

The effect of Tubocurare was quickly seen on Figure 3 along the raw data. A sharp fall in tension was correlated with the injection of the Tubocurare. The data represents the moment the injection stopped, and the first two minutes saw the greatest decrease. The muscle tension average was 21.43 grams during the first 15 seconds once the injection stopped. Although the preconceived expectations before starting the experiment involved a sharper decline of muscle tension that fall between 5 to 0 grams, there was still a sufficient and concrete decline emphasized on Figure 3. In a molecular level, this fall is attributed to the tubocurare ions occupying the receptor site of acetylcholine, thus the muscle contraction process ceased to exist. Furthermore, …show more content…
A possible biochemical reasoning for this baseline average was that not all the acetylcholine receptors were occupied by the tubocurare. Therefore, the 0.25 ml of tubocurare injection was insufficient to completely inhibit acetylcholine in binding with the Nicotine Acetylcholine receptors. With that being said, the data had the possibility of reflecting a lower average if more tubocorare dosage was injected into the gastrocnemius muscle. Regardless, the experiment succeeded in demonstrating the significance of acetylcholine in muscle contraction, along with the cause and effect relationship of competitive inhibitors to the production of muscle …show more content…
Depending on the settings of the stimulator, sizable muscle contractions were produced either by temporal summation or spatial summation. However, under direct muscle stimulation only a limited number of muscle fibers received the electrical stimulus. Meaning, only the muscle fibers that directly touch the electric needle will receive the stimulus to produce a contraction. Therefore, direct stimulation has a limiting factor of the number of fibers they are able to stimulate. With insufficient muscle fiber excitation, only weak to moderate tensions can be