Soft matter guided self-assembly of oscillating heart cells into functional macro-myocardium (A18)

在显微镜下，心脏组织和工程化心肌由偶联的主动（振荡）和被动细胞（即心肌细胞和成纤维细胞）的网络组成，其嵌入提供粘弹性机械偶联的细胞外基质中。该项目的主要目标是了解微观尺度上耦合的电和机械细胞振荡器的集合的非线性动力学如何导致宏观（组织）尺度上的集体，复杂的时空行为。我们将使用高分辨率成像和数据驱动的数值建模应用于工程心肌来研究这个研究问题。

Microscopically, cardiac tissue and engineered heart muscle consists of a network of coupled active (oscillating) and passive cells, i.e. cardiomyocytes and fibroblasts, embedded in an extracellular matrix providing viscoelastic mechanical coupling. The main objective of this project is to understand how the nonlinear dynamics of an ensemble of coupled electrical and mechanical cellular oscillators on the microscopic scale results in collective, complex spatio-temporal behavior on a macroscopic (tissue) scale. We will investigate this research question using high-resolution imaging and data driven numerical modeling applied to engineered heart muscles.