Figure 5
From: Mechanical activities of self-beating cardiomyocyte aggregates under mechanical compression
The temporary arrest of synchronous beating and its precursors in a pair of cardiac spheroids (CSs) under compression. (a) Temporal changes in the potential energy of the probe, U (top graph), and the normalized heights of the CSs, HA (middle graph; for the left CS in the snapshots in b and c) and HB (bottom graph; for the right CS in the snapshots in b and c), in the range of t = 150–170 s (from Figs. 4c and 4d). The open and dotted circles represent the local minimum (i.e., CS pair relaxation) and local maximum (i.e., CS pair contraction), respectively. The cross symbols represent the precursors of the temporary arrest (at t ~ 160 s) of synchronous beating. (b) Snapshots of the CSs in the range of t = 155.78–156.12 s. c: Snapshots of the CSs in the range of t = 165.02–165.32 s. The colors of the CSs in (b) and (c) represent the local in-plane velocity of the CSs calculated by particle image velocimetry. A1 and B1 are snapshots at the local minima of HA and HB, respectively, and A2 and B2 represent the local maxima of HA and HB, respectively. The snapshot at t = 155.96 s marked by X in (b) is an example of the precursors (i.e., the momentary arrest of the CS pair for less than 40 ms). The scale bar in each snapshot represents 0.3 mm.
