Next seminar: 04/24/2024
Collective curvature sensing and fluidity in three-dimensional multicellular
Wenhui Tang
Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT
Abstract: Collective cell migration is an essential process throughout the lives of multicellular organisms, for example in embryonic development, wound healing and tumour metastasis. Substrates or interfaces associated with these processes are typically curved, with radii of curvature comparable to many cell lengths. Using both artificial geometries and lung alveolospheres derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells, here we show that cells sense multicellular-scale curvature and that it plays a role in regulating collective cell migration. As the curvature of a monolayer increases, cells reduce their collectivity and the multicellular flow field becomes more dynamic. Furthermore, hexagonally shaped cells tend to aggregate in solid-like clusters surrounded by non-hexagonal cells that act as a background fluid. We propose that cells naturally form hexagonally organized clusters to minimize free energy, and the size of these clusters is limited by a bending energy penalty. We observe that cluster size grows linearly as sphere radius increases, which further stabilizes the multicellular flow field and increases cell collectivity. As a result, increasing curvature tends to promote the fluidity in multicellular monolayer. Together, these findings highlight the potential for a fundamental role of curvature in regulating both spatial and temporal characteristics of three-dimensional multicellular systems.
Squishy Physics & Pizza Seminar Series
When: Wednesday Evenings at 6pm. Pizza served after the talk.
Where: Room 209, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford St, on the Harvard Campus. Directions and parking instructions are here.
What: These talks are informal, with emphasis on new results and ideas, rather than polished presentations. The Squishy audience members typically include soft matter scientists, physicists, engineers, chemists, and biologists. The goal is to stimulate discussion with the audience. Talks are typically about 45 minutes long, with lots of questions along the way.
Pizza: Only the finest!
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Parking: Metered parking is available on Oxford Street. Speakers, please contact Matthew Zahnzinger to obtain a parking permit.
Squishy Physics is sponsored by the Weitz Research Group.
If you have comments or suggestions or would like to give a talk, please send an email to Thomas Litschel (tlitschel@seas.harvard.edu).