Excitation wave propagation in a patterned multi-domain cardiac tissue
N. N. Kudryashova, A. S. Teplenin, Y. V. Orlova+, K. I. Agladze
Laboratory of Biophysics of Excitable Systems, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology,
141701 Dolgoprudny, Russia
+iCeMS Research Building, Yoshida Honmachi, Sakyoku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan
Abstract
Electrospun fibrous mats are widely used in the contemporary
cardiac tissue engineering as the substrates for growing cardiac cells. The
substrate with chaotically oriented nanofibers leads to the growth of cardiac
tissue with randomly oriented, but internally morphologically anisotropic
clusters or domains. The domain structure affects the stability of the
excitation propagation and we studied the stability of the propagating
excitation waves versus the average size of the domains and the externally
applied excitation rate. In an experimental model based on neonatal rat
cardiac tissue monolayers, as well as in the computer simulations we found
that increase of domain sizes leads to the decrease of the critical
stimulation frequencies, thus evidencing that larger domains are having a
higher arrhythmogenic effect.