Here's a nice link to a paper on heart signaling, thanks to Sara:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1413606

More to come, when I have a chance to really figure this one out for myself.

Also, from Mercola, they've figured out how cholesterol damages the heart:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/10/13/here-s-how-cholesterol-damages-your-heart.aspx

http://jcs.biologists.org/cgi/content/abstract/jcs.006916v1

I remember the lecture that Brons did on this material. He covered the sodium potassium pump, which I had thought i somewhat understood, but he was able to completely muddy the waters. He took a simple mechanism and spent 1.5 hours confusing it. So here I will summarize my notes and previous knowledge, and see if I can get it to make sense again.

( basics of Sodium Potassium Pump, membrane potentials and ion channelsCollapse )