Taking a Closer Look at How Cells Move and Stick Together

A new paper published in EPJ Plus takes a step toward observing how cells stick to surfaces and move. The study was led by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

"Cell adhesion is the ability of a cell to stick to another cell or an extracellular matrix. This process is important in order to understand how cells interact and coordinate their behavior in multicellular organisms," says lead researcher Raj Kumar Sadhu. "We theoretically model the adhesion of a cell-like vesicle by describing the cell as a three-dimensional vesicle adhering on a flat substrate with a constant adhesion interaction."

Alongside his co-authors, Sadhu set about exploring the role of membrane-bound curvature sensitive proteins and the forces that act on the cytoskeleton during the adhesion process. The team discovered that curved proteins enhance the adhesion process considerably, especially when coupled with active cytoskeleton forces.

"Our work shows that the curved membrane proteins, coupled with the pushing force due to the cytoskeleton, can play a key role in the cell adhesion process," adds Sadhu. "In addition, we showed that these minimal ingredients are sufficient to produce a motile shape that closely resembles migrating cells. Our present work will motivate more research in this direction."

"Physical principles of shape, curvature and forces, combine to give living cells their shapes," concludes Sadhu. "We show that the cells can have a variety of dynamic shapes, which spontaneously arise due to physical principles, and control the function of the cells in our bodies."