Key result
Cardiac tissue elasticity modulates pacemaker cell automaticity, linking tissue stiffness to heart rhythm changes.
Why the study?
The study was conducted to understand the impact of cardiac tissue stiffness and elasticity on cardiac pacing.
Tissue elasticity modulates the automaticity of transcription factor-reprogrammed cardiac pacemaker cells, highlighting the importance of the mechanical environment in modeling the cardiac conduction system.
Animal models link stiffness to pacemaker automaticity; human relevance in fibrotic arrhythmias remains untested.
Tissue elasticity is essential to a broad spectrum of cell biology and organ function including the heart. Routine cell culture models on rigid polystyrene dishes are limited in studying the impact of tissue elasticity in distinct regions of the myocardium such as the cardiac conduction system. Gelatin, a derivative of collagen, is a simple and tunable platform for modeling tissue elasticity. We sought to study the effects of increasing tissue stiffness on cardiac pacemaker cell function by using transcription factor-reprogrammed pacemaker cells cultured on gelatin hydrogels with specific elasticity. Our data indicate that automaticity of the pacemaker cells, measured in rhythmic contractions and oscillating intracellular Ca
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Jing et al. (2025) studied this question. Cardiac tissue elasticity modulates pacemaker cell automaticity, establishing a framework to investigate the impact of tissue stiffness on heart rhythm in health and fibrotic disease.
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