Development of Passive Microrheology as a tool to study cell substrate interaction

我们建议使用微观流变学的新微机械技术来评估他们能够在多大程度上增加新的物理非侵入性方法来研究细胞与底物的相互作用，因为如此多的细胞生物学依赖于破坏性分析。为了帮助这一点，我们将使用两个细胞，角质形成细胞和成纤维细胞，观察它们在生理和亚生理钙条件下与一小部分特定底物的相互作用。这些细胞在这些条件下与这些底物的相互作用已经广为人知，并在麦克尼尔实验室得到了很好的记录。莎莉·麦克阿瑟博士将为这个项目提供具有良好特点的底物。因此，我们将使用一系列公认的细胞与底物的相互作用来检查微观流变学在多大程度上可以有效地跟踪细胞与底物相互作用的行为，并有望用于预测细胞骨架的组织，而不必求助于破坏性测试。

We propose to use new micromechanical techniques of microrheology to assess to what extent they are able to add new physical non-invasive methodologies for studying cell interaction with substrates given that so much of cell biology is dependent on destructive analysis. To assist in this we are going to work with two cells, keratinocytes and fibroblasts, looking at their interaction with a small range of defined substrates under physiological and sub-physiological calcium conditions. The interactions of these cells with these substrates under these conditions is already well known and well documented in the MacNeil laboratory. Dr Sally McArthur will be providing the well characterised substrates for this project. Accordingly we will use a range of well established cell interactions with substrates to examine to what extent microrheology can usefully follow the behaviour of cells as they interact with substrates and hopefully be used to predict the organisation of the cytoskeleton without having to resort to destructive testing.