Premium
Morphological pattern of mouse intrinsic cardiac nerve plexus
Author(s) -
Pauza Dainius H.,
Rysevaite Kristina,
Saburkina Inga,
Jokubauskas Marius,
Pauziene Neringa
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.26.1_supplement.726.11
Subject(s) - choline acetyltransferase , plexus , anatomy , cholinergic , nerve plexus , calcitonin gene related peptide , hilum (anatomy) , biology , tyrosine hydroxylase , immunohistochemistry , medicine , neuroscience , pathology , neuropeptide , receptor
The study was aimed to determine the 3D organization and immunohistochemistry of intrinsic neural plexus in mouse heart. In a whole heart preparation, intrinsic neural structures were revealed by a histochemical staining for acetylcholinesterase, while the double labeling of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), choline acetyltransferase (ChAT), substance P (SP) and calcitonin gene related peptide (CGRP) was applied to identify immunohistochemically the distribution of adrenergic, cholinergic and peptidergic neural components, respectively. Our findings demonstrate that extrinsic cardiac nerves access the ganglionated nerve plexus of the mouse heart hilum at the right and left cranial veins. Nerves and bundles of nerve fibers extend epicardially from this plexus to atria and ventricles by 5 neural pathways or subplexuses. Generally, the examined hearts from 56 mice contained 19±3 ganglia, in which 1.082±160 neurons reside. Majority of intrinsic neurons (83%) are ChAT(+), 3% ‐ TH(+); 14% – bifenotypic, i.e. they were immunoreactive both for ChAT and TH. The TH(+) epicardial nerve fibers are predominant on the dorsal and ventral sides of left atrium, whereas the most ChAT(+) axons proceed on the heart base toward the large intrinsic ganglia and within epicardium of the root of the right cranial vein. Peptidergic nerve fibers were abundant in the epicardium and within intrinsic ganglia adjacent to the heart hilum. In conclusion, although majority of nerves and neural bundles in the mouse heart are mixed, some of them express either adrenergic or cholinergic phenotype. This study was supported by the Research Council of Lithuania (No. MIP‐11184).