Berlin 2012 – scientific programme
Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help
BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 17: Posters: Physics of Cells
BP 17.36: Poster
Wednesday, March 28, 2012, 17:30–19:30, Poster A
Force Generation in Blood Platelets — •Sarah Schwarz G. Henriques1, Hansjörg Schwertz2, and Sarah Köster1 — 1Institute for X-Ray Physics & CRC Physics, University of Göttingen, Germany — 2Division of Vascular Surgery, University of Utah, USA
Cellular contraction is of vital importance to living organisms. Thus, for example, blood clotting is achieved by contracting blood platelets. To that effect, platelets activate at damaged blood vessel sites, aggregate and finally pull on intercellular fibrin links. Consequently, they solidify the clot mass, forming a plug to effectively seal the wound. Apart from being of great medical importance, blood platelets represent an ideal model system for studies of cellular contraction for two main reasons: They are simple, being anucleate, and their activation, which occurs within minutes, can be triggered and synchronized by the addition of thrombin. In our experiments we look at force generation at the level of single cells during platelet contraction. To this end, we use traction force microscopy, which provides access to the temporal evolution and spatial distribution of generated forces. Furthermore, we fix cells at different activation stages and stain actin in order to describe cytoskeletal reorganization steps. In combining both traction force microscopy and fluorescence imaging we can resolve traction force maps for single cells and simultaneously access information about force generating mechanisms in the cytoskeleton. We find that force transduction occurs predominantly at the periphery of the cell body and total forces are in the range of 30 nN, which is comparable to literature values.