Covers dense regular connective tissue, with its parallel collagen bundles and tendon and ligament role, then elastic connective tissue and its elastin-rich walls of large arteries. It then turns to pigment tissue, explaining melanocytes and the types of melanin, and closes with a table contrasting dense regular and dense irregular tissue and a list of plant, animal and microbial pigments.
Topic 51 of 97 in the MU Sofia syllabus for Cytology (Medicine, Year 1). The free AceMed note covers it in 5 sections, about 421 words (4 min of reading), with 14 flashcards.
In this note
Connective Tissues and Pigment Tissue
Compact Fibrous Connective Tissue
Elastic Connective Tissue
Pigment Tissue
Types of Pigments Found in Pigment Tissues:
Compact Fibrous Connective Tissue
Dense regular connective tissue is a type of compact fibrous connective tissue.
It is characterised by densely packed, parallel bundles of collagen fibres with very little ground substance.
This arrangement provides great strength and resistance to force in one direction, making it well-suited for structures like tendons and ligaments that connect bones and muscles.
The fibroblasts in dense regular connective tissue, called tendinocytes - in tendons, have elongated nuclei that are parallel to the fibres.
Elastic Connective Tissue
Elastic connective tissue contains a high proportion of elastic fibres, which are thinner than collagen fibres and form sparse networks interspersed with collagen bundles.
These fibres allow tissues to stretch or distend and return to their original shape, providing flexibility and resilience.
Elastic connective tissue is found in organs that undergo bending and stretching, like the walls of large blood vessels, particularly arteries.
In large blood vessels, elastin also forms fenestrated sheets called elastic lamellae.
Elastic fibres stain poorly with hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) but are stained more darkly than collagen in other stains such as orcein and aldehyde fuchsin.
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