BACKGROUND Cardiomyocyte transplantation is an innovative strategy for the treatment of heart failure after myocardial infarction. Cell junctions show diverse temporal polarization toward intercalated disks during postnatal development and exhibit altered distribution in diseased hearts. To elucidate the formation of cell junctions between grafted and host cardiomyocytes at the border zone of m...

Adiponectin (APN) exerts its metabolic regulation largely through AMP-dependent protein kinase (AMPK). However, the role of AMPK in APN's antiapoptotic effect in ischemic-reperfused (I/R) adult cardiomyocytes remains incompletely understood. The present study was designed to determine the involvement of AMPK in the antiapoptotic signaling of APN. Cardiomyocytes from adult male mice overexpressi...

Rationale: Polyploidy and multinucleation are characteristic features of mammalian cardiomyocytes, which develop shortly after birth when most differentiated cardiomyocytes become acytokinetic. Cardiac overload and hypertrophy further increase the degree of polyploidy of cardiomyocytes, suggesting a role in cell type–specific responses to physiological and pathological stimuli. Objective: We so...

Signal-Regulated Protein Kinases in Cardiomyocytes Through Calcineurin To the Editor: Zou et al1 reported recently that isoproterenol activates extracellular signal-regulated protein kinases (ERK) in cardiomyocytes through calcineurin. The results mediated by -adrenergic receptors ( -AR) were convincing in neonatal cardiomyocytes but might not be applicable to adult cardiomyocytes, which underg...

Cardiac muscle fibers consist of highly aligned cardiomyocytes containing myofibrils oriented parallel to the fiber axis, and successive cardiomyocytes are interconnected at their ends through specialized junctional complexes (intercalated disks). Cell culture studies of cardiac myofibrils and intercalated disks are complicated by the fact that cardiomyocytes become extremely flattened and exhi...

BACKGROUND Developmental, physiological and tissue engineering studies critical to the development of successful myocardial regeneration therapies require new ways to effectively visualize and isolate large numbers of fluorescently labeled, functional cardiomyocytes. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Here we describe methods for the clonal expansion of engineered hESCs and make available a suite...

Cardiomyocytes derived from pluripotent embryonic stem cells (ESC) have the advantage of providing a source for standardized cell cultures. However, little is known on the regulation of the genome during differentiation of ESC to cardiomyocytes. Here, we characterize the transcriptome of the mouse ESC line CM7/1 during differentiation into beating cardiomyocytes and compare the gene expression ...

Elevated expression and activity of matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP9) and decreased contractility of cardiomyocytes are documented in diabetic hearts. However, it is unclear whether MMP is involved in the regulation of contractility of cardiomyocytes in diabetic hearts. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that MMP9 regulates contractility of cardiomyocytes in diabetic hearts, and abl...

This review article discusses the mechanisms of cardiomyogenesis in the adult heart. They include the re-entry of cardiomyocytes into the cell cycle; dedifferentiation of pre-existing cardiomyocytes, which assume an immature replicating cell phenotype; transdifferentiation of hematopoietic stem cells into cardiomyocytes; and cardiomyocytes derived from activation and lineage specification of re...

BACKGROUND Resident c-kit positive (c-kitpos) cardiac stem cells (CSCs) could be considered the most appropriate cell type for myocardial regeneration therapies. However, much is still unknown regarding their biological properties and potential. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We produced clones of high and low expressing GATA-4 CSCs from long-term bulk-cultured c-kitpos CSCs isolated from adu...