Wolfgang Losert, University of Maryland
October 1, 2013

Living systems are very dynamic. From the directed motion of individual immune cells chasing an invader to the intricate collective motion of cells in a developing embryo cellular motion is critical to life. The control of cell dynamics is of significant practical importance in tackling complex diseases such as cancer, where cell migration is central to cancer metastasis. But for systems of such complexity, how can the dynamics even be characterized, much less steered? While genomics has given us unprecedented quantitative insight into the inner workings of the cell, genetic and proteomic properties are highly variable from cell to cell and from patient to patient. On the other hand, the physical characteristics of cells have proven to be more universal indicators of health and disease. Such characteristics include shape and stiffness, which have both been used for diagnosis for more than a century. With this in mind, we have developed novel approaches that quantitatively characterize the dynamics of shapes of migrating cells, ultimately connecting shape dynamics with the cellular biochemistry. Specifically we have discovered that rapidly migrating cells move via persistent shape waves. These mechanical waves of polymerizing actin are part of the dynamic, biochemically controlled cellular scaffolding. We found that cells utilize such mechanical waves to sense and follow surface nanotopography. The wave-like character of the sensing allows us to use our physics toolbox to thoroughly characterize these motions, as well as develop novel strategies to guide the migration of cells.

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