CeNS Colloquium

Prof. Carsten Beta
Institut für Physik und Astronomie, Universität Potsdam

Motility and directed locomotion of eukaryotic cells play a key role in many essential biological processes including wound healing, cancer metastasis, and embryonic morphogenesis. We present recent work that uses microfluidic techniques to address different stages of the chemotactic process in well controlled single cell experiments. On the one hand, we analyze the trajectories of chemotactic cells to derive a statistical description of this process in terms of a Langevin-type model. On the other hand, the internal dynamics of the actin cytoskeleton is probed by delivering systematically changing stimulation patterns to chemotactic cells. A combined approach of fluorescence imaging, microfluidics, and photo-uncaging provides a high level of spatiotemporal control in this study that is performed with cells of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum, a well-established model organism for cell motility and chemotaxis.