Speaker: Saleet Jafri
Title: Cellular Calcium Dynamic of Heart Contraction: Insights from Computational Modeling
Affiliation: George Mason University
Date: Friday, October 31, 2008
Place and Time: Room 101, Love Building, 3:35-4:30 pm
Refreshments: Room 204, Love Building, 3:00 pm

Abstract. Calcium plays and essential role in contraction of the heart. It couples cell membrane repsonses to contraction of the muscle proteins. Given its critical function, there is a complex regulatory framework consisting of the function of individual proteins and the cellular mophology that controls cardiac calcium dynamics. Computational modeling has played a critical role in understanding heart physiology and cardiac calcium dynamics. We have sucessfully used computational model to understand the elementary calcium release events to understand whole cell calcium dynamics spanning many spatial and temporal scales.