Synthetic strands of cardiac muscle: growth and physiological implication.

Cardiac muscle cells obtained fronm disaggregated embryonic chick hearts were cultured on difjerentially treated oriented substrata. Subsequent cell reaggregation, growth, and attachmwent produced linearly organized strands of cardiac muscle with dimensions suitable for electrophysiological analysis. Along the strand, areas that contained few muscle cells demonstrated reduced conduction velocity and were subject to propagation failure.