Prof. Leeya Engel
29/02/2024
David Wang Auditorium, 3rd floor Dalia Meidan Bldg.
14:30
The ability of living cells to respond to mechanical cues from the microenvironment plays a vital role in physiological processes such as embryonic development and heart function. Over the past decade, the field of mechanobiology has seen major advances catalyzed by increasingly powerful strategies to measure cell-generated forces and to identify mechanosensitive molecules. However, we know comparatively little about the nanometer-scale organization of the cellular components that underly the cell’s ability to generate and sense mechanical force. This knowledge gap reflects a lack of tools that can visualize cellular organization at the nanoscale. In this talk, I will present two cell culture platforms developed to provide programmed mechanical cues to cells imaged with cryo-electron tomography, a 3D transmission electron microscopy (TEM) modality that offers the highest resolution structural analysis within near native cells. The first is an extracellular matrix (ECM) micropatterning technology where we use maskless photolithography to functionalize TEM supports to shape cells and direct their positioning at high spatial accuracy, solving an important bottleneck in sample preparation. We demonstrated the utility of this technique for structural studies of cardiac and endothelial cells. The second is a platform developed to study the structures involved in cell sensitivity to ECM topography. Here we nanopatterned ECM fibers using eletrospinning. Over the long term, these technologies will inform our understanding of the physical cues required for healthy tissue formation.
Host: Asst. Prof. Josh Grolman