What controls the strength and duration of the heartbeat?

A novel signalling pathway in the regulation of cardiac contractility: Mechano-sensing in the myosin filaments

Professor Malcolm Irving at King’s College London is working out what controls the strength and duration of the heartbeat and what goes wrong in heart disease. During the heartbeat, the heart muscle contracts and pumps blood around the body. When it contracts, two sets of proteins in heart muscle cells, called thin and thick filaments, slide against each other. Every heartbeat is triggered by the movement of calcium into the heart muscle cells, which binds to the thin filaments, switching them on for a fraction of a second. Changes to the filament proteins cause the heart to perform more slowly. Professor Irving has discovered in the muscles that control the skeleton, the cells have another way of controlling the filaments, which involves them being stretched. In this project, Professor Irving will measure structural changes in thick filament proteins in heart muscle cells, and test whether this stretching helps to set the strength and duration of the heartbeat in health and disease. This research will reveal more about how the heartbeat is controlled in healthy hearts and in heart diseases such as cardiomyopathies.