WFU Physics Colloquium

TITLE: Probing the Responses & Native Stiffness of Cells Using Magnetic Tweezers

SPEAKER: Professor E. Tim. O'Brien, Sr.,

TIME: Wednesday Febuary 22, 2012 at 4:00 PM

PLACE: Room 101 Olin Physical Laboratory

Cells in tissues experience and adapt to stresses and patterns of forces throughout development and during normal healthy life. An example of where a normal steady state physiology may break down and exacerbate disease is the process of metastatis, where a normal epithelial morphology is disrupted by cells that lose cell-cell contacts, gain a motile and invasive phenotype, and invade healthy tissue. We are probing the changes in cellular compliance and cell responses to force application that accompanies the epithelial to mesenchymal transition ("EMT"), to see if we can determine the role that control of compliance changes may play in this disease process.