Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2009 APS March Meeting
Volume 54, Number 1
Monday–Friday, March 16–20, 2009; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Session Y5: Self-Organization in Biological Cells and Tissues II |
Hide Abstracts |
Sponsoring Units: DBP Chair: Ray Goldstein, University of Cambridge Room: 401/402 |
Friday, March 20, 2009 8:00AM - 8:36AM |
Y5.00001: Cells anticipate periodic events Invited Speaker: We show that an amoeboid organism can anticipate the timing of periodic events. The plasmodium of the true slime mold \textit{Physarum polycephalum} moves rapidly under favourable conditions, but stops moving when transferred to less-favourable conditions. Plasmodia exposed to unfavourable conditions, presented in three consecutive pulses at constant intervals, reduced their locomotive speed in response to each episode. When subsequently subjected to favourable conditions, the plasmodia spontaneously reduced their locomotive speed at the time point when the next unfavourable episode would have occurred. This implied anticipation of impending environmental change. After this behaviour had been evoked several times, the locomotion of the plasmodia returned to normal; however, the anticipatory response could subsequently be induced by a single unfavourable pulse, implying recall of the memorized periodicity. We explored the mechanisms underlying these behaviours from a dynamical systems perspective. Our results hint at the cellular origins of primitive intelligence and imply that simple dynamics might be sufficient to explain its emergence. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, March 20, 2009 8:36AM - 9:12AM |
Y5.00002: The Physics of Cardiac Fibrillation: Strings that kill Invited Speaker: Fibrillation is a state of spatio-temporal chaos in a 3d-biological excitable medium, namely the heart muscle. The building blocks are wave-emitting three-dimensional topological singularities in the electric excitation field of the tissue. These string like singularities send out a rotating wave fields with very fast frequencies (up to 10 times normal heart rate) and thus dominate over the pacemaker. The incoherent electrical excitation of the spatio-temporal chaotic dynamics leads to an unsynchronized contraction of the cardiac muscle and to the loss of the pumping action, and if untreated to death. Due to the topological nature of the spatio-temporal chaotic state it is very difficult to control. Current defibrillation technologies use strong electric field pulses (1 kV, 30 A, 12 ms) to reset the whole muscle. Here we report that natural muscle heterogeneities act as wave emitting sites when a weak electric field pulse is applied across the tissue. We report theoretical predictions on the physics and support the findings by results from experiment. This work was conducted in collaboration with Stefan Luther (MPIDS), Falvio Fenton ( Cornell), Amgad Squires (Cornell), Robert Gilmour (Cornell), Valentin Krinsky (MPIDS), Alain Pumir (NIce). [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, March 20, 2009 9:12AM - 9:48AM |
Y5.00003: Spatiotemporal patterns of voltage and calcium signaling in heart cells and tissue Invited Speaker: This talk will describe recent progress made in understanding oscillatory patterns of voltage and calcium signals that precede the onset of electromechanical wave turbulence in the main chambers of the heart. Results will illustrate how both physiologically detailed and abstract models have proven useful to cope with the bewildering molecular complexity of cardiac biology and to bridge phenomena on cellular and tissue scales. A main conclusion is that those oscillatory patterns can be self-organized, resulting from symmetry-breaking linear instabilities, or/and a manifestation of underling tissue heterogeneities. Thus studying the evolution of those patterns provides a valuable indirect probe of complex physiological processes that render the heart susceptible to the sudden onset of lethal heart rhythm disorders. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, March 20, 2009 9:48AM - 10:24AM |
Y5.00004: Synchronization of Eukaryotic Flagella and the Evolution of Multicellularity Invited Speaker: Flagella, among the most highly conserved structures in eukaryotes, are responsible for such tasks as fluid transport, motility and phototaxis, establishment of embryonic left-right asymmetry, and intercellular communication, and are thought to have played a key role in the development of multicellularity. These tasks are usually performed by the coordinated action of groups of flagella (from pairs to thousands), which display various types of spatio-temporal organization. The origin and quantitative characterization of flagellar synchronization has remained an important open problem, involving interplay between intracellular biochemistry and interflagellar mechanical/hydrodynamic coupling. The Volvocine green algae serve as useful model organisms for the study of these phenomena, as they form a lineage spanning from unicellular {\it Chlamydomonas} to germ-soma differentiated {\it Volvox}, having as many as 50,000 biflagellated surface somatic cells. In this talk I will describe extensive studies [1], using micromanipulation and high-speed imaging, of the flagellar synchronization of two key species - {\it Chlamydomonas reinhardtii} and {\it Volvox carteri} - over tens of thousands of cycles. With {\it Chlamydomonas} we find that the flagellar dynamics moves back and forth between a stochastic synchronized state consistent with a simple model of hydrodynamically coupled noisy oscillators, and a deterministic one driven by a large interflagellar frequency difference. These results reconcile previously contradictory studies, based on short observations, showing only one or the other of these two states, and, more importantly, show that the flagellar beat frequencies themselves are regulated by the cell. Moreover, high-resolution three-dimensional tracking of swimming cells provides strong evidence that these dynamical states are related to reorientation events in the trajectories, yielding a eukaryotic equivalent of the ``run and tumble'' motion of peritrichously flagellated bacteria. The degree of synchronization is found to depend upon the presence of external fluid flow, an important aspect of the dynamics in the context of evolutionary transitions to multicellularity. Comparison is made with dynamics of somatic cells of {\it Volvox}, which we have found can display metachronal waves, not previously reported in this organism. Implications of these findings for phototactic steering are also discussed. \vskip 0.2cm [1] M.Polin, I. Tuval, K. Drescher, J.P. Gollub, and R.E. Goldstein, submitted (2009). [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, March 20, 2009 10:24AM - 11:00AM |
Y5.00005: Single cell motility and trail formation in populations of microglia Invited Speaker: Microglia are a special type of glia cell in brain that has immune responses. They constitute about 20 \% of the total glia population within the brain. Compared to other glia cells, microglia are very motile, constantly moving to destroy pathogens and to remove dead neurons. While doing so, they exhibit interesting body shapes, have cell-to-cell communications, and have chemotatic responses to each other. Interestingly, our recent in vitro studies show that their unusual motile behaviors can self-organize to form trails, similar to those in populations of ants. We have studied the changes in the physical properties of these trails by varying the cell population density and by changing the degree of spatial inhomogeneities (``pathogens''). Our experimental observations can be quite faithfully reproduced by a simple mathematical model involving many motile cells whose mechanical motion are driven by actin polymerization and depolymerization process within the individual cell body and by external chemical gradients. [Preview Abstract] |
Follow Us |
Engage
Become an APS Member |
My APS
Renew Membership |
Information for |
About APSThe American Physical Society (APS) is a non-profit membership organization working to advance the knowledge of physics. |
© 2024 American Physical Society
| All rights reserved | Terms of Use
| Contact Us
Headquarters
1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3844
(301) 209-3200
Editorial Office
100 Motor Pkwy, Suite 110, Hauppauge, NY 11788
(631) 591-4000
Office of Public Affairs
529 14th St NW, Suite 1050, Washington, D.C. 20045-2001
(202) 662-8700