Spiralling into Control

From spinning galaxies to swarming honey bees, nature loves a rotating spiral. But inside our bodies these patterns can cause as much damage as a spinning tornado. Waves of electricity spiralling through heart muscle can cause potentially fatal heartbeat irregularities. Throughout nature, spiral wave structure is dictated by the physical properties of the core around which they spin. So if you can manipulate that core, you should be able to control the spiral. Researchers tested that theory using slices of rat heart cells engineered to respond to light. Using beams of light to alter cells’ electrical properties, they established and then steered electrical spirals. The experiment worked both in simulations (left hand spiral) and real cells (right two), letting the researchers guide the spiral to safety. Scaling the concept up from a single layer of cells to a whole heart might one day lead to new treatments for irregular heartbeats.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Video adapted from work by Rupamanjari Majumder and Iolanda Feola, and colleagues
• Laboratory of Experimental Cardiology, Department of Cardiology, Heart Lung Center, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands
• Video originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, September 2018