Indian scientists unravel hidden process behind transition of cells
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Loading... - Neeray Banerjee
- 19 Oct 2022
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Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have devised an experiment that sheds light on the mechanism that leads to transitions in cell membranes. The transition is essential for several biological phenomena such as cell division, cell mobility, transport of nutrients into cells, and viral infections.
Changes in the geometry and topology of self-assembled membranes underlie diverse processes across cellular biology and engineering. The team of researchers have looked at colloidal membranes, which are micrometer-thick layers of aligned, rod-like particles.
These membranes provide a more tractable system to study as they exhibit many of the same properties as cell membranes, and unlike a plastic sheet, where all the molecules are immobile, cell membranes are fluidic sheets in which each component is free to diffuse.
The study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences states that the experiment reveals the three-dimensional details of the pathway by which membranes undergo topological shape changes in real-time.
The colloidal membranes were made by a solution of rod-shaped viruses of two different lengths: 1.2 micrometers and 0.88 micrometers. The team studied the shape of the colloidal membranes changes as one increases the fraction of short rods in the solution. “I made multiple samples by mixing different volumes of the two viruses and then observed them under a microscope,” explains Ayantika Khanra, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Physics and the first author of the paper. Read more…
