Cardiac Conduction System Development

TL;DRAbstract

A rhythmic heart beat is coordinated by pacemaking impulses generated and conducted through the excitation-conduction system. The physiologic, anatomic, and cellular characteristics of this specialized cardiac tissue have been studied in great detail in the last decades. The advent of recent molecular approaches has now enabled us to address the mechanism that regulates differentiation and patterning of the conduction system within the developing embryo. Information accumulated in the last few years has proven that the conduction system is established by conversion of beating myocytes into conducting cells. The differentiation and patterning of the conducting cell network appears to be regulated by molecular signals derived from nonmuscle cardiac cell populations.

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