CELL SHAPE CONTROL AND RELATED FOCAL ADHESION DYNAMICS ON ALIGNED FIBER NETWORKS

摘要

By adjusting the fiber spacing on STEP scaffolds, cells take on different morphologies. Spindle-shaped cells which elongated along a single fiber were further probed for focal adhesion dynamics. It was found that smaller diameter fibers resulted in relatively longer focal adhesions, and it is hypothesized that this may be due to the cell compensating for smaller adhesion cross-sectional area by increasing its length. Precise focal-adhesion based network of actin fibers allows us to calculate the cellular elasticity along the stretch directions, which will be related to cellular elasticity and differentiation in our future studies.