OptoGap is an optogenetics-enabled assay for quantification of cell–cell coupling in multicellular cardiac tissue

Autor: Patrick M. Boyle, Jinzhu Yu, Aleksandra Klimas, John C. Williams, Natalia A. Trayanova, Emilia Entcheva
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Scientific Reports, Vol 11, Iss 1, Pp 1-15 (2021)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2045-2322
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-88573-1
Popis: Abstract Intercellular electrical coupling is an essential means of communication between cells. It is important to obtain quantitative knowledge of such coupling between cardiomyocytes and non-excitable cells when, for example, pathological electrical coupling between myofibroblasts and cardiomyocytes yields increased arrhythmia risk or during the integration of donor (e.g., cardiac progenitor) cells with native cardiomyocytes in cell-therapy approaches. Currently, there is no direct method for assessing heterocellular coupling within multicellular tissue. Here we demonstrate experimentally and computationally a new contactless assay for electrical coupling, OptoGap, based on selective illumination of inexcitable cells that express optogenetic actuators and optical sensing of the response of coupled excitable cells (e.g., cardiomyocytes) that are light-insensitive. Cell–cell coupling is quantified by the energy required to elicit an action potential via junctional current from the light-stimulated cell(s). The proposed technique is experimentally validated against the standard indirect approach, GapFRAP, using light-sensitive cardiac fibroblasts and non-transformed cardiomyocytes in a two-dimensional setting. Its potential applicability to the complex three-dimensional setting of the native heart is corroborated by computational modelling and proper calibration. Lastly, the sensitivity of OptoGap to intrinsic cell-scale excitability is robustly characterized via computational analysis.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals
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