Berlin 2024 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 11: Cell Mechanics I

BP 11.9: Talk

Tuesday, March 19, 2024, 12:15–12:30, H 2032

the role of the cytoskeleton for spatial and temporal control of cell mechanics studied using an average cell — •mohammad amin eskandari, bart vos, and till münker — Third institute of physics - Biophysics, Göttingen, Germany

Mechanical properties of cells have been shown to play a vital role in many biological functions such as migration, differentiation and division. While the cell mechanics has been largely studied at the cortex, hence the cellular interface to the environment, the intracellular mechanical properties are only recently within experimental reach. By doing active-passive microrheology using optical tweezers, we are able to directly measure the viscoelastic properties of the cytoplasm. The importance of intracellular mechanics for transport, organization, and even reaction kinetics is obvious, which suggests tight regulation by the cells. In contrast to this, we find that the viscoelastic shear modulus, which characterizes the intracellular mechanics varies over many orders of magnitude within a single cell type. To explain this discrepancy between expectations and measurement, we hypothesize that such heterogeneity arises from both, local and temporal variation cell compositions to test this we use micropatterns to create polarized cells in a well-defined way to achieve spatially registered microrheology experiments. Here I report on the challenge and present our solution for obtaining sufficient statistics, given that the probe particles used in the optical tweezers experiment are randomly distributed in the cytoplasm.

Keywords: cytoskeleton; cell mechanics; microrheology; average cell