Date of Award
Summer 9-12-2023
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Type
Dissertation
Abstract
Epithelial cell collectives migrate through tissue interfaces and crevices to orchestrate processes of development, tumor invasion, and wound healing. Various mechanisms ranging from the scale of single molecules to that of multicellular organisms have been proposed to address these complicated but vital processes. In chapter 1, we give a brief review on how confinement affects cell migration and why we chose polysiloxane (PDMS) microchannels as the in vitro platform for study collective cell migration across confinement. In chapter 2, we found that the migrating collectives built up cell density differentials upon encountering microchannels. Such accumulation of cell density altered cell shapes. By utilizing mutated cell lines with varied intercellular adhesions and migratory behaviors, we examined previously proposed theories by viewing epithelial monolayers as a granular system. In chapter 3, we compared the wildtype (WT) and the mutant with SUN1, a nuclear envelope protein, knockdown. And we suggest that by combining heterogeneous cell populations and the microchannel platform, we could further elucidate how the nucleus-cytoskeleton crosstalks play a role in tissue fluidity. This physical interpretation of collective cell migration could advance our understanding of complex living systems.
Language
English (en)
Chair
Amit Pathak