The passive electrical properties of spheroidal aggregates cultured from neonatal rat heart cells

Membrane specific resistance and capacitance of non-spontaneously active spheroidal aggregates, cultured from collagenase-dissociated neonatal rat heart cells, were calculated from changes in membrane potential due to intracellularly injected rectangular hyper- and depolarizing current pulses during diastole. The relation between steady-state membrane voltage displacement and injected current is linear for current pulses between +10 and -10 nA. No significant fall-off of electrotonic potential is measured in an aggregate at increasing distances from the site of current injection. The aggregate membrane resistance (input resistance) was best fitted by an inverse square function of the aggregate radius. This suggests selective current flow through the outer membranes of the spheroidal aggregate. Taking this into account the membrane specific resistance was calculated to be 753 +/- 38 omega cm2 (S.E. of mean; n = 39). The time course of the change in membrane potential is exponential with a time constant ranging from 5 to 26 ms, depending on the aggregate radius. The aggregate membrane capacitance is calculated from the exponential transients for each aggregate and appears to be a cubic function of the radius, indicating that the membrane area of all cells in the preparation equally contributes to the input capacitance. The membrane specific capacitance is calculated to be 0.97 +/- 0.02 microF/cm2 (S.E. of mean; n = 100). It is concluded that myocytes in aggregates are electrically well coupled and that a resistance in series with the inner membranes, if present, is negligible compared to the membrane resistance of the internal cells. In order to explain the finding that the membrane resistance was not inversely related to the cube of the aggregate radius, it is postulated that the membrane specific resistance might be a function of aggregate radius.