Regensburg 2025 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 17: Poster Session II

BP 17.54: Poster

Tuesday, March 18, 2025, 18:00–20:30, P4

Mechanosensing and shape adaption of cells on substrates of varying stiffness — •Pooja Yadav, Florian Rehfeldt, and Matthias Weiss — Experimentalphysik I,University of Bayreuth

Changes of characteristic cellular features with varying stiffness of the underlying substrate, e.g. shapes and sizes of cells and nuclei, are a hallmark of the complex interplay of mechano-biochemical feedback loops. To explore this in detail, we have quantified cellular features on polyacrylamide (PA) hydrogels of varying stiffness, from 2∼ kPa to 64∼ kPa, hence mimicking the diverse micro-environments found in vivo. In particular, we have quantified the areas of nuclei and cells, their aspect ratio, and the local order parameter of the cytoskeleton on different substrates, also in the absence and presence of cytoskeleton-severing drugs. As a result, we observed that cell and nucleus areas follow an isometric relation with both areas increasing with the stiffness of the substrate. In contrast, the aspect ratio of both show a non-trivial maximum at intermediate stiffnesses, which we attribute to the local nematic ordering of the cytoskeleton. Altogether, our data open up the way to investigate differential mechanical effects of nuclei and cells under perturbations.

Keywords: Polyacrylamide (PA) hydrogels; Mechanosensing; Cell Morphology; Cytoskelton; HeLa (wt)