Modeling and analysis of living beating cardiomyocyte in sub-cell scale

Abstract

The research on heart cells have attracted broad attention for the development of either heart disease therapy or muscle cell-based actuation for bio-syncretic robots. In order to study the mechanism and dynamics of beating activity of cardiomyocytes, many research methods have been proposed, such as the measurement of contractility and action potential of the cells. However, few of them has focused on the effect from the mechanical properties of sub-cell elements on the contraction performance of heart cells. In this work, a mechanical model of single heart cell was proposed based on the sub-cell structures, to study and control the contraction of the cardiomyocytes. The parameters of the parts in the theoretical model were identified with the cellular beating data obtained using Scanning Ion Conductance Microscopy (SICM) based on the derived mathematic model. Therefore, the contraction performance and the mechanical properties of sub-cell elements associated with the mechanical properties of parts in the model can be obtained for the further analysis of the relationship between the cell activity and sub-cell structures. This work is fundamental and meaningful for the research on cytobiology, heart mechanism and bio-syncretic robotics.