Cardiac myocytes aren’t all the same

Recent motivation to create biological machines and study cellular synchronization has highlighted the popularity of cardiac myocytes as large and dynamic force generating cells. However, the heart is a highly heterogeneous mixture of cells that are organized in a specific way to give rise to their collective function. Previous studies have shown that the morphology and ultrastrcuture of cells from different segments of the heart differ.

In our study, we showed that cells from different segments also differ in their dynamic behavior (contraction amplitude and frequency). These results suggest that studies of cardiac myocyte behavior should discriminate their segment of origin to maintain consistent dynamical behavior.

Reference:

E. de Souza, W. Ahmed, V. Chan, R. Bashir, T. A. Saif. “Cardiac myocytes’ dynamic behavior differs depending on heart segment” Biotechnology and Bioengineering, 2012. (DOI: 10.1002/bit.24725) [link]