Professor, Department of Physiology and Biophysics, School of Biomedical Engineering
Contact
T. Alexander Quinn, PhD Email:alex.quinn@dal.ca Phone: 902-494-4349 Web:
The Cardiac Autoregulation & Arrhythmias laboratory focuses on the intrinsic regulation of cardiac function and the effects of mechano-electric interactions on heart rhythm. Our goals are to: (i) define organ-to-subcellular autoregulatory mechanisms responsible for (patho-)physiological responses; (ii) discover their relevance for heart rhythm in health and disease; and (iii) apply insights to develop novel targeted anti-arrhythmic therapies.
Our Group
We are exploring a variety of research topics within the fields of cardiovascular physiology and disease. We employ an innovative multi-scale, multi-species approach (in whole animals to isolated tissue and cell preparations from human, rabbit, mouse, and zebrafish), combining advanced engineering-based experimental methods with computational modeling to gain insight into normal and diseased cardiac function at various levels of functional and structural complexity.
Selected Publications
Stoyek MR*, Doane SE*, Dallaire SE*, Long ZD*, Ramia JM, Cassidy-Nolan DL, Poon KL, Brand T, Quinn TA. POPDC1 variants cause atrioventricular node dysfunction and arrhythmogenic changes in cardiac electrophysiology and intracellular calcium handling in zebrafish. Genes. 2024; 15:280.
Baillie J, Ghobbes A, Garrity DM, Bark D, Quinn TA. The in vivo study of cardiac mechano-electric and mechano-mechanical coupling during heart development in zebrafish. Front Physiol. 2023; 14:1086050.
Stoyek MR*, MacDonald EA*, Mantifel M*, Baillie JS, Selig BM, Croll RP, Smith FM, Quinn TA. Drivers of sinoatrial node automaticity in zebrafish: comparison with mechanisms of mammalian pacemaker function. Front Physiol. 2022; 13:818122.
Quinn TA, Kohl P. Cardiac mechano-electric coupling: acute effects of mechanical stimulation on heart rate and rhythm. Physiol Rev. 2021; 101:37-92.
MacDonald EA, Madl J, Greiner J, Ramadan AF, Wells SM, Torrente AG, Kohl P, Rog-Zielinska EA, Quinn TA. Sinoatrial node structure, mechanics, electrophysiology and the chronotropic response to stretch in rabbit and mouse. Front Physiol. 2020; 11:809.
Cameron BA, Kaihara K, Kai H, Iribe G, Quinn TA. Ischemia enhances the acute stretch-induced increase in calcium spark rate in ventricular myocytes. Front Physiol. 2020; 11:289.
