Effect of Substrate Stiffness on Mechanical Coupling and Force Propagation at the Infarct Boundary.

ABSTRACT: Heterogeneous intercellular coupling plays a significant role in mechanical and electrical signal transmission in the heart. Although many studies have investigated the electrical signal conduction between myocytes and nonmyocytes within the heart muscle tissue, there are not many that have looked into the mechanical counterpart. This study aims to investigate the effect of substrate stiffness and the presence of cardiac myofibroblasts (CMFs) on mechanical force propagation across cardiomyocytes (CMs) and CMFs in healthy and heart-attack-mimicking matrix stiffness conditions. The contractile forces generated by the CMs and their propagation across the CMFs were measured using a bio-nanoindenter integrated with fluorescence microscopy for fast calcium imaging. Our results showed that softer

SUBMITTER: Nguyen DT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6303235 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature