Invited Speaker Abstract 2018 Hunter Cell Biology Meeting

Insights into spatio-temporal mechanisms underlying ATP supply and demand in cardiomyocytes using computational physiology. (#46)

Vijay Rajagopal

Recent electron microscopy data have revealed that cardiac mitochondria are not arranged in crystalline columns, but are organised with several mitochondria aggregated into columns of varying sizes often spanning the cell cross-section. This raises the question - how does the mitochondrial distribution affect the metabolic reactions within cardiomyocytes, which likely impact force dynamics? Here we employed finite element modelling of cardiac bioenergetics, using computational meshes derived from electron microscope images, to answer this question. Our results indicate that heterogeneous mitochondrial distributions can lead to significant spatial variation across the cell in concentrations of inorganic phosphate, creatine (Cr) and creatine phosphate (PCr). However, our model predicts that sufficient activity of the creatine kinase (CK) system, coupled with rapid diffusion of Cr and PCr, maintains near uniform ATP and ADP ratios across the cell cross sections. This homogenous distribution of ATP and ADP also should evenly distribute force production and twitch duration with contraction. These results suggest that the PCr shuttle, and associated enzymatic reactions, act to maintain uniform force dynamics in the cell despite the heterogeneous mitochondrial organization. However, our model also predicts that under hypoxia - activity of mitochondrial CK enzyme and diffusion of phosphagens may be insufficient to sustain uniform ATP/ADP distribution and hence force generation. This result points towards to the significance of other mechanisms of energy distribution, such as proton conduction among  mitochondrial networks, which may complement the  PCr shuttle in hypoxia.