Referenced in: none

Automatically associated channels: Cav3.2

Title: Self-beating atypically shaped cardiomyocytes survive a long-term postnatal development while preserving the expression of fetal cardiac genes in mice.

Authors: Mariko Omatsu-Kanbe, Takefumi Yamamoto, Yasuhiro Mori, Hiroshi Matsuura

Journal, date & volume: J. Histochem. Cytochem., 2010 Jun , 58, 543-51

PubMed link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20197490

Abstract
The present study was designed to examine the postnatal developmental changes of atypically shaped cardiomyocytes (ACMs) prepared from the heart of newborn [postnatal day 1 (day-1)] through aged (12-month-old) mice. ACMs were identified as a novel type of self-beating cardiomyocyte with a peculiar morphology in mouse cardiac ventricles. The cell length of ACMs significantly increased during the first three postnatal months and further increased over the following 9 months. In contrast, the population of ACMs was significantly decreased within the first 5 weeks and reached a plateau in the adult stage. ACMs obtained from newborn and adult mice exhibited similar spontaneous action potentials. The expression of the fetal cardiac gene products atrial natriuretic peptide and voltage-gated T-type Ca(2+) channel Ca(V)3.2 was confirmed by immunostaining in ACMs obtained from both newborn and aged mice. These observations provide evidence that ACMs that exhibit spontaneous beating survive the long-term postnatal development of cardiac ventricles while preserving the expression of fetal cardiac genes. This manuscript contains online supplemental material at http://www.jhc.org. Please visit this article online to view these materials.