Nikta Fakhri, MIT. Image: © Adam Glanzman
The discovery could enable the design of synthetic cells, which have biomedical applications such as wound healing and drug delivery.
Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered a way to control the movements of starfish cells using light.
Cells can move and jiggle in response to certain proteins and enzymes, which in turn, can cause cells to divide and eventually grow into a fully formed organism.
Through studying the motion of egg cells produced by starfish, the MIT researchers focused on a particular enzyme that triggers a surge of movements in a starfish egg cell.
The team genetically designed a light-sensitive version of the enzyme and injected it into the egg cells. They then used different patterns of light to stimulate the cells.
This triggered the enzyme, which prompted the cells to jiggle and move in predictable ways depending on the pattern of light use. The researchers could even shine light at specific points around a cell to stretch its shape from a circle to a square.
The discovery could provide a new tool for controlling cell shape at its earliest developmental stages. This research could then enable the design of synthetic light-activated cells that could help with wound-healing or in drug delivery.
Dr Nikta Fakhri, associate professor of physics at MIT and the study’s senior author, said the team is “uncovering basic design principles for how living systems self-organise and evolve shape”.
“The power of these tools is that they are guiding us to decode all these processes of growth and development, to help us understand how nature does it,” she said.
The researchers compiled their observations from the experiments and derived a theoretical framework to predict how a cell’s shape will change depending on the way in which it is stimulated with different patterns of light.
Fakhri said this framework opens a window to “the excitability at the heart of cellular remodelling”.
“This work provides a blueprint for designing ‘programmable’ synthetic cells, letting researchers orchestrate shape changes at will for future biomedical applications.”
The team’s research is published in Nature Physics and was supported in part by the Sloan Foundation and the US National Science Foundation.
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