2024 APS March Meeting
Monday–Friday, March 4–8, 2024;
Minneapolis & Virtual
Session S35: Control Strategies in Soft Matter and Biological Systems
8:00 AM–11:00 AM,
Thursday, March 7, 2024
Room: 103A
Sponsoring
Units:
DSOFT GSNP DBIO
Chair: José Alvarado, University of Texas at Austin
Abstract: S35.00004 : Nonlinear effects of electrical stimulation strength on tissue-scale collective migration
9:24 AM–9:36 AM
Abstract
Presenter:
Jeremy Yodh
(Princeton University)
Authors:
Jeremy Yodh
(Princeton University)
Yubin Lin
(Princeton University)
Daniel J Cohen
(Princeton University)
Tissues are essentially agent-based active matter that exhibit numerous complex, essential collective behaviors such as healing. Thus, approaches to formally control the many cells within a tissue as a group are quite valuable, necessitating new control frameworks suitable for large-scale agent-based systems. We have been developing a unique approach to do this in living tissues that harnesses a natural process called electrotaxis—directed cell migration to ionic currents/DC electric fields. Such currents form naturally in tissues due to ion transport, damage, and development. Further, electrotaxis is nearly universal in multicellular organisms, and we have been able to demonstrate numerous examples of steering collective cell migration of 10,000+ cells in tissues spanning kidney, skin, and gut systems by mimicking and shaping these natural electric fields to accelerate healing and accelerate tissue growth. While electrotaxis is clearly powerful, it has nearly entirely been studied as a biological phenomenon rather than as a control framework for living active matter. For instance, even the most basic question of how the strength of an applied DC field affects the group-level collective cell electrotaxis in a tissue is poorly explored. Here, we investigate how tissue-scale electrotaxis varies with electrical stimulation strength and specifically evaluate the spatiotemporal response of epithelial sheets (skin, kidney, etc.). Our preliminary findings demonstrate a distinct difference between the 'bulk' response of the tissue (in the center of a tissue) and the edge effects that varies with increasing field strength. While the bulk 'speed' of collective migration goes up, the edges of the tissue (such as at the edge of an injury) respond differently. Clearly such systems can be optimally controlled, which is what we are pushing towards and will be discussing here.