Cardiac Pacemaking

Funded Activity Summary

Heartbeats are considered to arise through specialised pacemaker cells establishing rhythmically generated (i.e. pacemaker) action potentials, which then trigger propagating action potentials in heart muscle causing contraction and pumping of blood. This research proposal aims to challenge the physical model that is used to describe this pacemaker process and resultant heart conduction. Our reasons for doing this derive from our discovery of an alternative pacemaker-conduction mechanism, which we have shown to operate in various smooth muscles. This mechanism, termed store-based pacemaking, is entirely different to the currently held cardiac model but could readily achieve the same outcome. We will investigate the hypothesis that this pacemaker mechanism is also fundamental to heart pacemaking and conduction. Positive support for our hypothesis, as indicated by our pilot findings, may severely challenge the present model for cardiac pacemaking. Such an outcome will have major ramifications on present interpretation of cardiac function in health and disease and will be particularly important to interpretation of disorders associated with cardiac arrhythmias and heart conduction.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2004

End Date: 01-01-2006

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $417,750.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Medical bacteriology

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

arrhythmia | calcium signalling | conduction block | electrophysiology | heart | pacemaker | sympathetic nervous system

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