Cyclic AMP signaling in cardiac myocytes

•The aim of the present review is to give an overview of the current knowledge on cAMP pathways in cardiac cells and discuss new perspectives in the field.•It describes various effectors of the cyclic nucleotide, some recently discovered and discuss their emerging role.•Finally, it includes a brief presentation of pioneering tools developed to study how cAMP microdomains are organized in the cardiac cell to control heart function. The cyclic nucleotide 3′,5′-cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) is a ubiquitous second messenger of paramount importance in the regulation of the cardiac pump. It is now well established that cAMP is confined in specific subcellular compartments where it modulates various targets associated in signalosomes to control, for example, excitation–contraction coupling or gene transcription. In this review, we summarize notable breakthroughs on how cAMP is synthesized, degraded and compartmentalized. We describe its effectors, including newly described targets with emerging roles in heart. We also briefly discuss innovative methods recently developed to bring new insights on the role of these cAMP microdomains to control cardiac function.