What is the function of the cardiomyocytes?
What is the function of the cardiomyocytes?
Cell facts • Cardiomyocytes are the cells responsible for generating contractile force in the intact heart. Specialized cardiomyocytes form the cardiac conduction system, responsible for control of rhythmic beating of the heart.
What are cardiomyocytes connected by?
Cardiomyocytes are connected by intercalated discs, a complex cell junction unique to cardiac cells. The intercalated disc is similar in appearance and function to finger-joints used in wood construction, and they fit together to form a strong physical, chemical, and electrical connection between adjacent cells [11].
What makes cardiac cells unique?
Like skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle cells are striated due to a similar arrangement of contractile proteins. Unique to the cardiac muscle are a branching morphology and the presence of intercalated discs found between muscle fibers.
What are HL 1 cells?
HL-1 is a cardiac muscle cell line, derived from AT-1 mouse artial cardiomyocyte tumor lineage (Claycomb et al., 1998). These cells have the morphology of differentiated cardiomyocytes, maintaining the biochemical and electrophysiological properties and the ability to contract, while they can be passaged several times.
What are cardiac myocytes?
Cardiac myocytes form a three-dimensional syncytium that enables propagation of electrical signals across specialized intracellular junctions to produce coordinated mechanical contractions that pump blood forward (Severs, 2000).
What is the special about tissue present in the heart?
Complete answer: Cardiac muscle tissue is a specialized muscle tissue that is present only in the heart. The contractions of this muscle, which are rhythmic, help to pump out blood through the blood vessels to all the parts of the body. The cardiac muscle is controlled by the brain and it is involuntary.
What are the distinctive features of cardiac muscles?
Four characteristics define cardiac muscle tissue cells: they are involuntary and intrinsically controlled, striated, branched, and single nucleated. Cardiac muscle is considered to be an involuntary tissue because it is controlled unconsciously by regions of the brain stem and hypothalamus.
How are cardiomyocytes used in the isolation process?
Moreover, isolated cardiomyocytes undergo a metabolic shift from aerobic, that is, oxidative phosphorylation, toward anaerobic glycolysis. A question has been raised whether surviving cardiomyocytes (i.e., from enzymatic dissociation in the isolation process) used in a study can truly represent the cell population in the heart.
How to determine the viability of cardiomyocytes?
Morphology and viability of ventricular cardiomyocytes from patients with different heart diseases. a Representative images of ventricular myocytes from healthy controls, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy patients without or with heart failure. b Quantification of the rate of rod-shaped myocytes and cell viability.
Are there any concerns about using cardiomyocytes in culture?
Other concerns about using cultured cardiomyocytes include the use of animal sera (e.g., fetal bovine serum, horse serum, and calf serum) in the culture medium that has vast impact on cell growth, attachment, and morphology. Some cardiomyocytes, especially embryonic and neonatal cardiomyocytes, often lose myofibril orientation and cell shape.
How are mitochondria important to the function of cardiomyocytes?
Given the energy demands derived from cardiomyocyte function, the adult cardiomyocytes contain numerous mitochondria, which can occupy at least 30% of cell volume. Adult cardiomyocytes meet >90% of of the energy requirements by oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) in the mitochondria.