110 / 155
Single-Cell Biophysics: Measurement, Modulation, and Modeling
Poster Abstracts
105
14-POS
Board 7
Inspect the Dynamic Variations in Cytoskeleton Arrangement during Cell Aggregating in
Time Lapse Microscopy
Jiang Ching-Fen
.
I-Shou University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
The cytoskeleton is an intricate network of protein filaments that support the cell architecture and
dominate cell motility by performing contractility. The structure of cytoskeleton is continuously
reorganized as a cell changes shape, divided, and responds to its environment. Therefore,
investigation into its dynamic structural variation gives a clue to understand the biological
functional change of the cell, such as differentiation, growth, metastasis, and apoptosis.
However, current fluorescence microscopic techniques limit to observation on static structure of
the cytoskeleton. This study developed a series of image processing techniques to extract the
cytoskeleton in the cell images obtained from time-lapse microscopy, and allowed the
investigation into the dynamic structure of cytoskeleton during cell migration. Two types of
cells, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and lung cancer cells (LCCs), cultured in chitosan-HA
membranes were investigated in this study. Microscopic videos were provided by the
Biomaterials Laboratory in the Institute of Polymer Science and Engineering at National Taiwan
University. The videos were recorded by a ASTEC® CCM-1.4XZY/CO2 system with a CCD
camera mounted on a time-lapse microscope with a magnification ratio of 100:1. The acquisition
rate was fixed at one acquisition every 15 min. We first verified the consistency between textural
patterns extracted by our method and the cytoskeleton distribution viewed by fluorescence
microscopy. The dynamic variations in cytoskeleton patterns of the MSCs and LCCs during their
aggregation were then compared. The results show that the aggregated LCCs without merging
contained concentric textural pattern, while the aggregated MSCs with merging revealed
directional texture pattern which corresponded to their moving directions. Hence, the developed
cell image processing techniques may provide a direct and convenient way to inspect the
dynamic arrangement of cytoskeleton during cell movement without immuno-fluorescence
staining