Cardiac arrhythmias are a major cause of morbidity and mortality. In younger patients, the
majority of sudden cardiac deaths have an underlying Mendelian genetic cause. Over the
last 15 years, enormous progress has been made in identifying the distinct clinical
phenotypes and in studying the basic cellular and genetic mechanisms associated with the
primary Mendelian (monogenic) arrhythmia syndromes. Investigation of the
electrophysiological consequences of an ion channel mutation is ideally done in the native�…

Since human embryonic stem cells were first differentiated to beating cardiomyocytes a
decade ago, interest in their potential applications has increased exponentially. This has
been further enhanced over recent years by the discovery of methods to induce pluripotency
in somatic cells, including those derived from patients with hereditary cardiac diseases.
Human pluripotent stem cells have been among the most challenging cell types to grow
stably in culture, but advances in reagent development now mean that most laboratories can�…