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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 43: Cell Adhesion
BP 43.7: Talk
Wednesday, March 9, 2016, 16:45–17:00, H43
Cytoskeletal organization in cells on micropatterns — •Marco Linke1,2, Felix Frey1,2, Vytaute Starkuviene-Erfle2, and Ulrich S. Schwarz1,2 — 1Institute for Theoretical Physics, Heidelberg University, Germany — 2BioQuant, Heidelberg University, Germany
Mammalian cells show large variability in cell shape and cytoskeletal organization when grown on planar cell culture substrates with homogeneous protein coating. Therefore micropatterns are increasingly used to normalize their shape and structure, but a quantitative understanding of the resulting intracellular organization is missing. Here we analyze the cytoskeleton of cells growing on a micropatterned substrate by measuring the local orientation of the microtubule network and calculate a typical orientation field for various micropattern geometries. We then model the microtubule cytoskeleton with two different approaches. First, we simulate individual filaments and take the interaction between the actin and microtubule networks into account by using an effective persistence length of the microtubules. Secondly, we use a continuum model based on the theory of liquid crystals in which we minimize the nematic free energy functional. By considering biologically plausible boundary conditions and the influence of the centrosome and the cell nucleus, in both cases we get predictions for global cell organization that agree well with experimental results.