SKM 2023 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 21: Bioimaging
BP 21.10: Vortrag
Donnerstag, 30. März 2023, 12:15–12:30, BAR Schö
Dynamic allometry of nuclei and cell size in early embryos of a model organism — Rolf Fickentscher1, Tomoko Ozawa2, Akatsuki Kimura2, and •Matthias Weiss1 — 1Experimental Physics I, University of Bayreuth, Germany — 2Cell Architecture Laboratory, National Institute of Genetics, Mishima, Japan
Allometric relations between two observables are a widespread phenomenon in biology. The volume of nuclei, for example, has frequently been reported to be linearly related to the cell volume, but also conflicting, sublinear power-law correlations have been reported. Given that nuclei are vital organelles that harbor and maintain the cells' DNA, an understanding of the allometric scaling of nuclear volumes, which eventually defines the concentration and accessibility of chromatin, is of high interest. Using the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, we show here that the allometry between cell and nucleus volumes is a dynamically adapting phenomenon with an asymptotic linear scaling. The adaption rate of the nucleus volume also scales with cell size. Our experimental data are well captured by a simple and supposedly generic model based on a diffusion-limited liberation of chromatin sites which drives decompaction and hence nucleus growth. Extrapolating our results to the general case of growing and proliferating cells suggests an isometric scaling of cell and nucleus volumes as the generic case.