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Spark-Induced Sparks As A Mechanism Of Intracellular Calcium Alternans In Cardiac Myocytes, Robert J. Rovetti, Xiaohua Cui, Alan Garfinkel, James N. Weiss, Zhilin Qu
Spark-Induced Sparks As A Mechanism Of Intracellular Calcium Alternans In Cardiac Myocytes, Robert J. Rovetti, Xiaohua Cui, Alan Garfinkel, James N. Weiss, Zhilin Qu
Mathematics Faculty Works
Rationale: Intracellular calcium (Ca) alternans has been widely studied in cardiac myocytes and tissue, yet the underlying mechanism remains controversial.
Objective: In this study, we used computational modeling and simulation to study how randomly occurring Ca sparks interact collectively to result in whole-cell Ca alternans.
Methods and Results: We developed a spatially-distributed intracellular Ca cycling model in which Ca release units (CRUs) are locally coupled by Ca diffusion throughout the myoplasm and sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) network. Ca sparks occur randomly in the CRU network when periodically paced with a clamped voltage waveform, but Ca alternans develops as the pacing speeds …