Regensburg 2016 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 50: Posters - Cell Adhesion

BP 50.5: Poster

Mittwoch, 9. März 2016, 17:00–19:00, Poster C

Dynamics of actin stress fiber patterns in laterally constrained cells — •Andreas Müller and Tilo Pompe — Universität Leipzig, Institute of Biochemistry, Johannisallee 21-23, 04109 Leipzig, Germany

Living cells are subjected to many physical cues, such as viscoelasticity of the environment and spatial constraints. The latter holds especially true for cells in multicellular, compartmentalized organisms, like us. In previous work we found a bimodal behavior with regard to the formation of exterior and interior stress fibers and their spacing for human umbilical vein endothelial cells under lateral constraints [1].

We now observed a high robustness of this bimodal behavior against changes in biophysical and biochemical parameters, including substrate stiffness, also within cell types of higher contractility. We found that inhibition of myosin activity with blebbistatin or inhibition of ROCK with Y-27632 only lead to minor perturbations in the bimodal behavior. Furthermore, traction forces and strain energies of laterally confined cells were only slightly attenuated with increasing constraint and showed no apparent correlation to the two distinct actin cytoskeleton morphologies. Live cell imaging of stress fiber patterns revealed a fast switching between different stress fiber states within minutes, indicating that cells under lateral constraints permanently adapt to their surroundings.

[1] Müller, A., Meyer, J., Paumer, T., Pompe, T. Cytoskeletal Transition in Patterned Cells Correlates with Interfacial Energy Model. Soft Matter, 2014, 10, 2444-2452.