Abstract
The research on the biological pacemaker has been very active in recent years. And turning nonautomatic ventricular cells into pacemaking cells is believed to hold the key to making a biological pacemaker. In the study, the inward-rectifier K+ current (IK1) is depressed to induce the automaticity of the ventricular myocyte, and then, the effects of the other membrane ion currents on the automaticity are analyzed. It is discovered that the L-type calcium current (ICaL) plays a major part in the rapid depolarization of the action potential (AP). A small enough ICaL would lead to the failure of the automaticity of the ventricular myocyte. Meanwhile, the background sodium current (IbNa), the background calcium current (IbCa), and the Na+/Ca2+ exchanger current (INaCa) contribute significantly to the slow depolarization, indicating that these currents are the main supplementary power of the pacing induced by depressing IK1, while in the 2D simulation, we find that the weak electrical coupling plays a more important role in the driving of a biological pacemaker.
Highlights
The sinoatrial node (SAN) is the genuine pacemaker in the heart, which generates the electrical pulses automatically and initializes the heartbeats [1, 2]
The automaticity of the ventricular myocyte is induced by depressing IK1; and the effects of other currents on the pacing are analyzed to elucidate which currents play the major supplementary role in the initiation of the automatic pacing and which ones in the rapid depolarization
We investigate how the automatic cells excite the ventricular myocytes and how the pulses propagate in the tissue
Summary
The sinoatrial node (SAN) is the genuine pacemaker in the heart, which generates the electrical pulses automatically and initializes the heartbeats [1, 2]. The pulses propagate rapidly to the whole heart through the conduction network, such as the interauricular bundle and Purkinje fibers [3,4,5]. The main solution to treat these SAN diseases is to implant electronic pacemakers [10], of which the defects include the short battery lifespan, infections, and thrombosis [11,12,13,14,15]. The biological pacemaker attracts the attention of the researchers to overcome the disadvantages [16,17,18]. One of the popular strategies is to create a biological pacemaker in the ventricle
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