The Effect of Caffeine on the Contractility of the Heart Muscle in Daphnia

Abstract

Many studies have shown that caffeine increases the contractility of the heart muscle in humans. Due to the fact that the human cardiac tissue functions similarly to that of Daphnia magna, we tested how caffeine affects the Daphnia heart rate and used the results to make assumptions about the human heart contractility in response to caffeine. We added various concentrations of caffeine to the environments of different Daphnia to determine how the caffeine levels affect the Daphnia’s heart rate. We had two experimental groups and one control group and four trials were run for each of these groups. The findings were helpful in understanding the different factors affecting cardiac muscle contraction in humans; understanding these factors is useful in maintaining a more consistent heart rate in genetically engineered cardiac muscle cell prototypes.