Acknowledgments We sincerely thank Fedorov Lab members Drs. Benjamin Buck and Aleksei Mikhailov, Matthew Fazio, Shane Scott, Megan Subr, and Allison Wilson for valuable input during the preparation of this chapter. The sinoatrial node (SAN) is the primary pacemaker of…
Cardiac Cell-To-Cell Communication By Gap Junctions The existence of low-resistance pathways between cardiac cells was postulated from experimental assessment of electronic interactions (cable analysis) between cardiac Purkinje fibers before the existence of gap junction channels was known. During the subsequent…
Introduction Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is a leading cause of death, with an annual mortality of approximately 1 in 1000. SCD in the young is predominantly caused by inherited cardiac disorders that predispose the patient to the development of life-threatening…
Acknowledgments This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Aging. Introduction The heart’s pacemaker cells residing in the sinoatrial node (SAN) normally generate spontaneous rhythmic changes of their membrane potential,…
Overview Of Cardiac microRNAs Introduction Over the past 2 decades, advances in next-generation sequencing have demonstrated that even though most of the human genome is transcribed into RNAs, only 1% to 2% of the genome encodes for proteins. Therefore RNAs…
Introduction Over the course of the average human life span, the heart will beat more than 2 billion times. Moreover, the cardiovascular system must be essentially failproof across the decades of human life as any loss of function even for…
Introduction And Historical Perspective A heartbeat results from the added output of millions of cells that contract in synchrony. To achieve this function, complex molecular networks work in concert with exquisite temporal precision. The accurate timing of the molecular events…
Acknowledgments We thank Ricardo Caballero for comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by a 2018 Health Research Grant from “la Caixa” Foundation; CNIC Intramural Grant Severo Ochoa Program (IGP-SO); R01 Grant HL122352 from the U.S. National Heart Lung…
Introduction In the heart, the main repolarizing currents are carried by potassium ions. A number of potassium currents shape and control the action potential (AP). The inward rectifier K + current is crucial for maintaining the membrane potential near the…
Introduction The generation of the action potential is based on an exquisite orchestration of many ion channels acting in concert with a balance of depolarizing and repolarizing forces such that the system (the heart) generates an impulse and returns to…