Abstract: The collective chemosensing of nonexcitable mammalian cells involves a biochemical network that features gap junction communications and heterogeneous single cell activities. To understand the integrated multicellular chemosensing, we study the calcium dynamics of fibroblast cell colonies in response to adenosine triphosphate (ATP) stimulation at varying cell densities, ATP concentrations and colony geometries. We found various emergent, collective behaviors that suggest the system is self-organized to critical points, while at the same time features deterministic differences between individual cells. These results suggest an underlying network structure that goes beyond mean-field theories to describe the collective chemosensing of nonexcitable mammalian cells  

 

About the Speaker: Dr. Bo Sun received his B.S. degree from Tsinghua University and his Ph.D degree from New York University. His education gave him an extremely strong background in optics and statistical physics. After graduation, he worked as postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University, where he studied the collective behavior of mammalian cells during migration and chemosensing in microfluidics devices, as well as the tumor growth in microfabricated landscapes. In 2013, he joins Oregon State University and continues his research by using advanced imaging, microfabrication, and analytic tools, to focus on the physics of various collective cellular behaviors.

  

Date&Time: July 3, 2013 (Wednesday), 16:30 - 17:30
Location: 610 Meeting Room