Jan 4 • General discussion
Researchers use electric fields to herd cells like flocks of sheep
Researchers use electric fields to herd cells like flocks of sheep
"Scientists have long known that naturally occurring electrochemical signals within the body can influence the migration, growth and development of cells—a phenomenon known as electrotaxis."
EXCERPTS ; "...a device that can herd groups of cells like sheep, precisely directing the cells' movements by manipulating electric fields to mimic those found in the body during healing. The technique opens new possibilities for tissue engineering, including approaches to promote wound healing, repair blood vessels or sculpt tissues." "What the cells perceive is sort of a virtual angle, and that allows us to program any complex maneuver, like a full circle," said Cohen. "That's really surprising—that's an amazing level of control that we wouldn't have expected to be possible, especially with thousands of neighboring cells executing these maneuvers on command." They found that the cells time-averaged signals generated along the two axes over a time window of about 20 seconds: Turning on the vertical electric field for 15 seconds and the horizontal field for 5 seconds, for instance, would cause the cells to migrate more in the vertical than in the horizontal direction. "It's kind of like an Etch A Sketch," said Zajdel, referring to the classic drawing toy in which lines can be created in any direction by turning two control knobs. "We've got the horizontal and the vertical knobs, and we can get the cells to trace out arbitrary trajectories in the whole 2-D space just by using those two knobs." Scientists have long known that naturally occurring electrochemical signals within the body can influence the migration, growth and development of cells—a phenomenon known as electrotaxis. These behaviors are not nearly as well understood as chemotaxis, in which cells respond to chemical concentration differences. One barrier has been a lack of accessible tools to rigorously examine cells' responses to electric fields. The new system, assembled from inexpensive and readily available parts, enables researchers to manipulate and measure cultured cells' movements in a reliable and repeatable way. In a paper published June 24 in Cell Systems, the Princeton team described the assembly and preliminary studies using the device, which they call SCHEEPDOG, for Spatiotemporal Cellular HErding with Electrochemical Potentials to Dynamically Orient Galvanotaxis. (Galvanotaxis is another term for electrotaxis.)
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Researchers use electric fields to herd cells like flocks of sheep
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