Automaticity was induced in isolated guinea pig and cat papillary muscles by application of depolarizing constant current pulses. Increasing extracellular potassium from 1 to 15 mM caused a shift of pacemaker-like activity to less negative diastolic potentials and a decrease in maximum phase 4 slope. Membrane resistance, estimated from the relation of applied current to maximum diastolic potential, decreased when extracellular potassium was increased. Voltage clamps of cat papillary muscle demonstrated that action potentials activate a time-dependent outward current which has a reversal potential of -79.1 mV (+/- 0.99 SE, n = 20) at an extracellular potassium concentration of 5 mM. The reversal potential of this current varies with extracellular K+ with a slope of 50-60 mV per 10-fold concentration change. The current is activated by voltage clamps or action potential plateaus in the range of -30 to +30 mV. It has a time constant of deactivation which increases from approximately 100 to over 400 msec as clamp potential is increased from -90 to -60 mV. It is proposed that this current is equivalent to Ix1 demonstrated in other cardiac tissues and is responsible, in combination with inward currents, for automaticity in ventricular fibers.
Katzung et al. (Sat,) studied this question.