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Cardiovascular Research 2006 72(3):364-374; doi:10.1016/j.cardiores.2006.08.013
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Copyright © 2006, European Society of Cardiology

Catecholamines and development of cardiac pacemaking: An intrinsically intimate relationship

Steven N. Ebert* and David G. Taylor

Biomolecular Science Center, University of Central Florida, United States

* Corresponding author. Burnett College of Biomedical Sciences, Biomolecular Science Center, University of Central Florida, 4000 Central Florida Blvd., Orlando, FL 32816, United States. Tel.: +1 407 823 4609; fax: +1 407 823 0956. Email address: ebert{at}mail.ucf.edu

A generation ago, a melding of imagination and experimental evidence led to the hypothesis that catecholamines were essential in establishing basal cardiac pacemaking rhythm. Subsequent discoveries of depolarizing "pacemaker" currents and viable adult catecholamine-deficient animals raised serious doubts about the necessity of catecholamines in pacemaking. However, the findings that catecholamines are produced in pacemaking regions prior to innervation, and that they are required for embryonic survival during a defined "critical period" of embryonic development have revitalized the original hypothesis. Recent results have further suggested that intrinsic cardiac adrenergic cells can differentiate into pacemaking myocytes, and that protein kinase A, a prominent downstream mediator of β-adrenergic signaling, is required for pacemaking activity. Here, we discuss how catecholamines and the intrinsic cardiac adrenergic cells that produce them may influence ontological development of cardiac pacemaking.

KEYWORDS Epinephrine; Norepinephrine; Cardiac development; Pacemaker

Time for primary review 22 days


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