Orateur
Dr
Alice NICOLAS
(Laboratoire des Technologies de la Microelectronique, CEA-CNRS-UJF)
Description
Cell adhesion has attracted the attention of physicists and engineers since it has become apparent that (i) managing it is a prerequisite to organize cells in a synthetic matrix for bioengineering applications, and (ii) that it could not be described with theories designed for dead matter, albeit sophisticated they are. The adhesion of cells to their surrounding medium begins with the formation of ligand/receptor bonds. Bond formation induces the generation of intracellular contraction forces, which in turn regulate the size of the adhesion clusters. The amplitude of these muscle like, contraction forces adapts to the mechanical properties of the environment, and so does the size of the adhesion clusters.
However, the adaptation of cell adhesion to the mechanical properties of their environment follows an unexpected trend if referring to the physical description of passive nucleation and growth of clusters of adsorbed molecules onto a surface: adhesion patches preferentially grow onto rigid environments, although passive anchoring of proteins should be favored on soft, deformable substrates. Here we present a thermodynamic approach that captures cell living feature as its ability to provide energy to balance the losses in substrate deformation. We compare this approach to other molecular scale, stochastic descriptions, and conclude on the possibility that cell adhesion mechanosensitivity could be governed by general, physical principles.
