2nd of April 2015, Chichley Hall
Donald Ingber gave an intense tour of 20+ years of research into the mechanobiology of cells and tissues. The following will only capture some aspects of this very intense talk. He started off at the initial observation that cells exert forces on their environment. He elaborated on the tensegrity model of cell mechanics, and its limitations. He showed how cutting of stress fibres using laser cell surgery established that cells on a soft substrate are under tension whereas on a stiff substrate they were coupled to the substrate. Th involvement of the primary cilia was shortly mentioned in conjunction of the idea that the cytoskeleton forms an integrated bio-composite, with the intermediate filaments connecting the nucleus to the cytoskeleton and the environment. Challenging cells with small mechanical disturbances e.g. by twisting magnetic beads lead to a stiffening of the cells, if the beads were connected to the cytoskeleton. The first observable reaction to a mechanical challenge, e.g. a magnetic bead being pulled, is a calcium influx that happens within a few milliseconds. The TRPV4 channel has also been shown to be involved in mechanical signalling, e.g. in response to an osmotic challenge. Then moving on to applications he illustrated how stem cells exposed to a mechanical challenge (squashing) were induced to kick off tooth development. The talk was rounded off by a short review of the "Body on a Chip" programme which is underpinned by the recent successes in modelling the lung and the gut on a chip.
More about Donald Ingber & the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering: http://wyss.harvard.edu
This talk was part of a workshop on "Cell Mechanobiology" organised by Rene de Borst, which took place April 1st and 2nd 2015, with support by the Royal Society at Chicheley Hall. for the programme details see: http://bio-mat-sketches-mor.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/cell-mechanobiology-workshop-1st-2nd.html