Regensburg 2022 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 12: Poster 2
BP 12.15: Poster
Dienstag, 6. September 2022, 17:30–19:30, P4
Neutrophil cell behavior as a response to mechanical confinement and substrate stiffness — •Katharina Rieck1,2,3, Fatemeh Abbasi2,3, Matthias Brandt2, and Timo Betz2,3 — 1Department of Physics, University of Münster, Germany — 2Institute of Cell Biology, ZMBE, University of Münster, Germany — 3Third Institute of Physics, Biophysics, University of Göttingen, Germany
Neutrophils are among the first immune cells attacking invading microorganisms in our body. To reach the site of infection they must undergo extreme cellular deformations while experiencing high shear stress during their migration through highly confined microenvironments. In order to investigate the mechanisms driving their confined migration and cell shape adjustment, we probe cell behavior and traction force generation in different levels of confinement with variable stiffnesses of the confining boundaries. We seed Neutrophils between two polyacrylamide (PAA) gels of the same stiffness and vary substrate Young*s modulus (3kPa, 15kPa, 30kPa) as well as the distance between the gels. This allows to examine the impact of microenvironment stiffness and confinement level on cell migration and forces. Using the substrate elastic modulus and cell induced gel deformation we are able to measure their traction stress. Our preliminary results demonstrate that cells exert higher traction forces on stiffer substrates. In confinement cells show higher traction forces than on 2D substrates. Furthermore, cells are more motile in confinement and show more motility on gels of higher stiffnesses. However, no significant difference of traction forces in different levels of confinement was observed.