Synchronization in growing heterogeneous media

¹  Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica - NanKang Taipei, Taiwan 115, ROC
²  Department of Physics, Center for Complex Systems, and Graduate Institute of Biophysics, National Central University - Chungli, Taiwan 320, ROC
³  Department of Informatics, Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy - Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
⁴  Department of Radiophysics, Nizhny Novgorod State University - Nizhny Novgorod, Russia

Corresponding authors: pylai@phy.ncu.edu.tw ckchan@gate.sinica.edu.tw

Received: 13 February 2009
Accepted: 10 March 2009

Abstract

Synchronization of heterogeneous systems that consist of oscillatory and passive elements are studied in cardiac myocytes/fibroblasts co-cultures. It is found that beating clusters of cardiac myocytes surrounded by fibroblasts will be formed. The beatings of the cardiac myocyte clusters are not correlated at early times, but get synchronized as the cultures mature. This synchronization can be understood by a Kuramoto model with a time-increasing coupling strength. Our findings show that the growth of the coupling strength between clusters is linear, while the overall wave dynamics of the system is controlled by the passive fibroblast in the system which presumably is growing exponentially.