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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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“Fiber recruitment by Cells Drives Extracellular Matrix Mechanosensing in Engineered Fibrillar Microenvironments”
Brendon Baker, Ph.D.*
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Boston University
Seminar will be made available via videoconference in the Health Sciences Research Building, room E 182 and Technology Enterprise Park, room 104.
To investigate how cells sense stiffness in settings relevant to the architecture of native extracellular matrices (ECM), we designed a synthetic fibrous material with tunable mechanics and user-defined architecture. In contrast to flat hydrogels, these fibrous materials recapitulated cell-matrix interactions of collagen matrices including arborized cell morphologies, cell-mediated realignment of ECM fibers, and bulk contraction of the material. Surprisingly, while increasing stiffness induced cell spreading and proliferation on flat hydrogels, higher stiffness in fibrous matrices instead suppressed spreading and proliferation. Lower stiffness in fibrous networks permitted active cellular forces to recruit nearby fibers, dynamically increasing ligand density and stiffness local to the cell and promoting the formation of focal adhesions and related signaling. These studies demonstrate a departure from the well-described relationship between material stiffness and spreading established by flat hydrogel surfaces, and introduce fiber recruitment as a novel mechanism by which cells probe and respond to mechanics in fibrillar matrices.
Faculty Host: Ajit Yoganathan, Ph.D.
