Steven Niederer, Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering at King's College London, will give a talk on Friday 9th March on Modelling Cardiac Calcium Dynamics in the SERCA KO Mouse.
Time: 10.00 - 11.00
Place: UMB, Dept of Mathematical Sciences and Technology (IMT), Room TF141
In the cardiac myocyte the Ca2+ transient signals contraction with each beat. Ca2+ dynamics are regulated by the movement of ions across the cell membrane and within the cell. Central to this regulation is the uptake of Ca2+ from the cytosol into the sarcoplasmic reticulum. In SERCA KO mice, the serca2 gene is excised and protein expression decays over 7 weeks. Over this period the sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ dynamics breakdown and compensatory pathways are up-regulated to maintain Ca2+ regulation. To unravel the effects of the compensatory mechanisms biophysical models of cardiac myocytes from control mice and from mice 4 weeks and 7 weeks post Serca2 excision were developed. The models capture the progression of the compensatory mechanisms and provide a quantitative description of the mechanisms underlying the progression of these mice towards a heart failure phenotype.
