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Speaker: Prof. Pablo J Sáez, PhD / Cell Communication and Migration Laboratory, UKE, Hamburg
Host: Dr. Matthias Krause
Title: Decision-making during cell migration
Abstract: Migrating cells often encountering obstacles and junctions, where their path branches into alternative directions, such as cells moving on top or within blood vessels. Cells undergoing mesenchymal migration adhere to the substrate, and when facing bifurcations are forced to coordinate the adhesion and detachment of the competing branches. However, how cells decide a new direction, when the decision is unbiased, remains largely unknown. Similarly, it is poorly understood how migrating cells coordinate membrane dynamics and polarity during branching to maintain a good trade-off between microenvironmental exploration and migratory efficiency. Here, we use in vitro and in vivo live-cell imaging using different levels of complexity, advanced image analysis to analyze the response of migrating cells when facing symmetric junctions, and extreme branching when cells simultaneously face several bifurcations. We found that actin and membrane dynamics play a key role to choose a new direction in both cases i) when cells face a single symmetric junction (Y-shaped with equal angles, Ron et al. 2024), and ii) when cells exhibit high levels of branching because they face several junctions at the same time (Liu et al.). These results shed light on the mechanisms by which cells resolve unbiased junctions and branching during cell migration.
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Event details
G.8New Hunt’s House
Great Maze Pond, London, SE1 9RT