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Updated: Feb 18, 2026

Micropatterned Magneto-Rheological Elastomers to Drive Changes in Cardiomyocyte Alignment
Published on: June 10, 2025
Community effect of cardiomyocytes in beating rhythms is determined by stable cells
Tatsuya Hayashi1,2, Tetsuji Tokihiro3,4, Hiroki Kurihara2,5
1Graduate School of Mathematical Sciences, the University of Tokyo, 3-8-1 Komaba, Tokyo, 153-8941, Japan.
Abstract:
The community effect of cardiomyocytes was investigated in silico by the change in number and features of cells, as well as configurations of networks. The theoretical model was based on experimental data and accurately reproduced recently published experimental results regarding coupled cultured cardiomyocytes. We showed that the synchronised beating of two coupled cells was tuned not to the cell with a faster beating rate, but to the cell with a more stable rhythm. In a network of cardiomyocytes, a cell with low fluctuation, but not a hight frequency, became a pacemaker and stabilised the beating rhythm. Fluctuation in beating rapidly decreased with an increase in the number of cells (N), almost irrespective of the configuration of the network, and a cell comes to have natural and stable beating rhythms, even for N of approximately 10. The universality of this community effect lies in the fluctuation-dissipation theorem in statistical mechanics.
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