Title: Cardiac excitation-contraction coupling - Osmosis
Headings: Cardiac excitation-contraction coupling
Cardiac excitation-contraction coupling
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Jessica Moore
Cardiovascular system
Auscultation of the heart
Electrocardiography
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Cardiac excitation-contraction coupling
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Cardiac excitation-contraction coupling
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Content: Another feature of cardiomyocytes are passageways called transverse tubules, or T-tubules. T-tubules are extensions of the outside environment. They increase the surface area of the cardiomyocyte and they look like the letter T, so it’s easy to remember their name. Think of a large walk-through aquarium: you can walk through tunnels and look at the sea creatures all around you, but you’re not in the water with them. Finally, there’s the sarcoplasmic reticulum, which is an organelle that stores intracellular calcium, the calcium that is sequestered inside the cell. When a depolarization wavefront hits a cardiomyocyte, a few calcium ions flow through gap junctions, and if a threshold membrane potential is reached, then sodium channels start to open up. If there’s a depolarization, then ions start to move across the cell membrane, and that’s where the T-tubules play a key role. During the part of the cardiomyocyte action potential when calcium ions flow into the cell, the presence of T-tubules helps bring calcium deep into the cell. Once this extracellular calcium gets inside, it binds to the ryanodine receptors on the sarcoplasmic reticulum, which releases even more calcium into the cell - a process called calcium-induced calcium release.