Using Topographical Guidance to Investigate Cytoskeletal Excitability*

The extracellular environment provides mechanical, electrical, and chemical inputs that play key roles in cellular development, intracellular signaling, and cell migration. When responding to the extracellular environment, the cell can be viewed as an excitable system that can be driven into several distinct “states.” These states, which consist of particular morphologies created by combinations of physical inputs, can be induced across a range of cell types and can be leveraged as platforms for isolating and perturbing a parameter of interest. In this talk, we use topographical features of a size comparable to collagen fibers to place MCF10A and HEK293T/17 cells into distinct states in which cytoskeletal polymerization waves are guided by and align with the underlying topography. We then use an array of techniques, including Raman spectroscopy and optical flow analysis, to investigate links between these polymerization waves and other signaling factors.