Abstract
A biological pacemaker, which is a pacemaker cell created from normally quiescent non-pacemaking cells, is expected to be an alternative to electronic pacemakers. Recent studies on biological pacemaker engineering have revealed that a modification of ionic currents across the cell membrane elicits the pacemaking ability of a ventricular myocyte. We perform bifurcation analyses using an elaborate mathematical cell model to investigate an efficient way to create biological pacemakers from human ventricular myocytes. Pacemaker activity appears during the suppression of IK1. Furthermore, we show that an additional increment of ICaL, INaCa, or If facilitates the generation of pacemaker activity under IK1-reduced conditions.
