Regensburg 2013 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 32: Cell Adhesion and Mechanics
BP 32.12: Vortrag
Freitag, 15. März 2013, 12:30–12:45, H43
The Power of a Flagellar Beat — •Axel Hochstetter1, Eric Stellamanns2, Sravanti Uppaluri2, Niko Heddergott3, Markus Engstler3, and Thomas Pfohl1,2 — 1Departement Chemie, Universität Basel, Basel, Switzerland — 2Max-Planck-Institut für Dynamik und Selbstorganisation, Göttingen, Germany — 3Biozentrum, Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
In the microscopic world, where inertia cannot be used for propulsion, most of our everyday strategies of self-propulsion do not work. One class of parasites that knows its way around, the flagellate Trypansoma, manage to navigate in blood, which flows a lot faster than the Trypanosomes' own propulsion velocity. There, the Trypanosomes are constantly attacked by their host's immune response. Yet, they survive and even penetrate the blood-brain-barrier, which actually should be too tight to enter. Although Trypanosomes are known for more than 100 years, their motility strategies are not completely elucidated yet. Using high-speed microscopy combined with optical tweezers in microfluidic devices and analyzing the recorded data, new light has been shed on the motility of these parasites. Our results show that Trypanosomes can be optically trapped and dragged through microfluidic devices without harming them. Once caught in an optical trap, they rotate in elaborate patterns. By analyzing the power-spectra for our high-speed image-series we have discovered two main rotation frequencies. Furthermore, we probe the impact of their chemical environment and of objects in close proximity, such as particles, red blood cells and other Trypanosomes, by analyzing their motility behaviour.