Heat production in isolated heart myocytes: differences among species.

A new calorimetry method has been developed to measure heat production from heart cell suspensions under continuous perfusion. The method is technically independent of the temperature at which the measurements are made, allows full control of the perfusion media, and is suitable for various biological preparations such as cells from diverse tissues, membrane vesicles, or skinned cells. The resting heat rate (Hr) measured at 18.5 degrees C in three different species (19.2 +/- 0.43, 12.8 +/- 0.56, and 9.4 +/- 0.52 mW/g dry wt for rat, guinea pig, and rabbit ventricular myocytes, respectively) agrees with that obtained with other methodologies such as oxygen consumption, thermopiles, and whole heart calorimetry. The Hr measurements showed an excellent correlation with the percentage of rod-shaped cells, indicating that rounded cells are metabolically inactive. Although the time course of the effect of increasing extracellular [K] was dependent on the species, the new steady level of Hr observed under higher extracellular [K] was significantly higher in all three species (+8.3 +/- 1.2, +9.5 +/- 4.0, and +9.3 +/- 2.7 mW/g dry wt for rat, guinea pig, and rabbit ventricular cells, respectively). This indicates that the commonly used "arrested-heart" preparation (with high extracellular [K]) for evaluation of basal metabolism most probably overestimates the real resting values. The present results also show that the wide range of resting metabolism reported in whole tissue is not due to cellular heterogeneity nor to myocyte interaction and supports the idea of an inverse relationship between resting metabolism and body weight or animal size across species.