AJP - Cell Physiology, Vol 260, Issue 3 C449-C456, Copyright © 1991 by American Physiological Society

ARTICLES

Unusual [Ca2+] dependence of vascular smooth muscle cell shortening velocity

T. J. Dougherty and S. P. Driska
Physiology Department, Temple University School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19140.

The relationship between unloaded shortening velocity and Ca2+ concentration was determined for hog carotid arterial smooth muscle cells, freshly isolated by digestion with papain. Cells were exposed to various [Ca2+] for 60 s at 37 degrees C and then stimulated with 10 microM histamine. Cell length was measured by a video analysis system. Shortening velocity was expressed as an exponential rate constant by fitting the cell lengths to the following equation: length = Lmin + (Lmax-Lmin)exp[-v (time-latency)], where Lmax is length before contraction, Lmin is shortest length reached, time is time elapsed after addition of agonist, latency is time from addition of agonist until contraction starts, and v is the exponential rate constant (s-1). Cells shortened substantially, usually reaching one-fourth to one-third of their initial length within 1 min. Shortening velocities of the cells were much faster than published values of maximum shortening velocity in muscle strips from this same tissue. At 1.6 mM Ca2+, v was 0.173 +/- 0.015 s-1. When Ca2+ was increased to 5 or 10 mM, v was not significantly different. However, when Ca2+ was decreased to 0.5 and 0.16 mM, v increased to 0.288 and 0.258 s-1, respectively. The difference between 0.5 and 1.6 mM was significant. The unexpected increase in shortening velocity at low Ca2+ was also seen when 10 mM caffeine was used as a stimulus: v at 1.6 mM Ca2+ was 0.156 s-1, whereas v at 0.16 mM Ca2+ was 0.272 s-1. The high shortening velocities we measured suggest that measurements made on multicellular tissues seriously underestimate the potential shortening velocity of isolated individual cells.

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