Jin Han

Effect of taurine on the activation of background current in cardiac myocytes of the rabbit

Several amino acids, such as taurine, aspartate, glutamate and β- alanine, are concentrated by cardiac cells up to very large concentrations, for instance, up to 30mM in the case of taurine (Huxtable, 1978). There are two important questions to be answered about these amino acids, especially taurine; how such a large gradient for taurine is established across the sarcolemmal membrane in the mammalian heart and for what it is used. In spite of this large gradient, taurine is not incorporated into proteins and is slowly metabolized with a half-life in the body of around 15 days (Huxtable, 1978). Taurine, however, has been shown to protect the heart from Ca-paradox (Kramer et al., 1981; Takihara et al., 1988), hypoxic injury (Franconi et al, 1985; Sawamura et al., 1986) and Na-overloading (Suleiman et al., 1992) and to have a beneficial effect on chronic congestive heart failure (Takihara et al., 1986).