Recent advancements of stem cell technology have enabled us to produce spontaneously beating human heart cells in a laboratory. In an active collaboration with the stem cell researchers at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology at Tampere University, Jiyeong Kim, with her background in physics, applied computational tools to investigate complex properties in the beat patterns of human heart cells. In particular, the advanced computational analysis detects fractal-like properties in seemingly chaotic- and random-looking recordings from human hearts and heart cells.
This truly multidisciplinary work revealed that the fractal-like properties are present in the cells without any external inputs, confirming that they are intrinsic nature at the most fundamental level.
“The similarity between a functioning human heart and these clusters of cells in their beat dynamics is astounding”, Jiyeong Kim says.
“And the level of complexity in the beat patterns is altered with presence of drugs and genetic mutations related to cardiac diseases. This will help us understand the intrinsic mechanisms that are important in functionality of the stem cell derived heart cells in future research and applications.”
Kim’s dissertation also focuses on establishing the advanced computational tools suitable for the heart and cell studies and explores their powerful applicability as well as their limitations.
“We continue to improve our computational tools. Not only they are fast and effective, but they are also so versatile that the applications are not limited to biological data”, she adds.
The public defence on 20 January 2023
The doctoral dissertation of M.Sc. Jiyeong Kim in the field of computational physics, titled Computational analysis of complex beat-to-beat dynamics in heart cells, will be publicly examined at the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences at Tampere University on 20 January 2023 at 12.00 at Hervanta Campus in Sähkötalo auditorium S2 (Korkeakoulunkatu 3, Tampere). The Opponent will be Professor Elaine Chew from King’s College London, UK. The Custos will be Professor Esa Räsänen from the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences at Tampere University.
The doctoral dissertation is available online.
The public defence can be followed via remote connection.
Photograph: Jiyeong Kim