Regensburg 2000 – scientific programme

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SYBP: Biologie und Physik

SYBP 1: Biologie und Physik I

SYBP 1.1: Invited Talk

Wednesday, March 29, 2000, 14:00–14:40, H2

Cell adhesion as wetting phenomenon — •E. Sackmann — Physikdepartment E22, Biophysics Lab., Technische Universität München, D-85747 Garching

The lecture deals with the physics of adhesion of soft elastic shells such as cells or vesicles. Cell adhesion is regulated by specific lock-and-key forces, a phalanx of universal interfacial forces and membrane elasticity. This interplay is mimicked by studying the receptor mediated interaction of vesicles with biofunctionalized solids mainly using microinterferometric techniques.

The competition between strong attraction and membrane undulation-induced weak repulsion leads to the spontaneous formation of pinning domains, reminiscent of adhesion plaques observed during cell adhesion.

Remarkably, adhesion induced lateral phase separation results in a strong reduction of the work of adhesion which could be exploited by cells to regulate the adhesion strength in order to avoid cell death.

Analysis of the surface profile of soft adhering cells in terms of the elastic boundary conditions at the adhesion zone allows local measurments of the free adhesion energy, the membrane tension and bending stiffness. This is possible by simultaneous application of hydrodynamic flow fields. This method is applied for quantitative studies of effects of mutations of the cytoskeleton of Dictyostelia cells on the adhesion and locomotion.