Inherent rhythm of smooth muscle cells in rat mesenteric arterioles: an eigensystem formulation

TL;DR

This paper models the ionic dynamics of smooth muscle cells in rat mesenteric arterioles using an eigensystem approach, revealing different calcium oscillation types and their synchronization properties, which could influence cell communication and global oscillations.

Contribution

It introduces an eigensystem formulation for SMC ionic dynamics, providing a new frequency-domain perspective and insights into calcium oscillation synchronization and resonance mechanisms.

Findings

Identified three calcium oscillation types: spontaneous, agonist-dependent oscillations, and spikes.

Demonstrated synchronization properties among SMCs and their relation to calcium and voltage signals.

Showed that SMC rhythm enhances cell communication and global oscillation modes.

Abstract

On the basis of experimental data and mathematical equations in the literature, we remodel the ionic dynamics of smooth muscle cells (SMCs) as an eigensystem formulation, which is valid for investigating finite variations of variables from the equilibrium like in common experimental operations. This algorithm provides an alternate viewpoint from frequency-domain analysis and enables one to probe functionalities of SMC's rhythm by means of a resonance-related mechanism. Numerical results show three types of calcium oscillations of SMCs in mesenteric arterioles: spontaneous calcium oscillation, agonist-dependent calcium oscillation, and agonist-dependent calcium spike. For simple single and double SMCs, we demonstrate properties of synchronization among complex signals related to calcium oscillations, and show different correlation relations between calcium and voltage signals for various synchronization and resonance conditions. For practical cell clusters, our analyses indicate that the rhythm of SMCs could (1) benefit enhancements of signal communications among remote cells, (2) respond to a significant calcium peaking against transient stimulations for triggering globally-oscillating modes, and (3) characterize the globally-oscillating modes via frog-leap (non-molecular-diffusion) calcium waves across inhomogeneous SMCs.