Adhesion strategies of Dictyostelium discoideum – a force spectroscopy study

“Motile cells require reversible adhesion to solid surfaces to accomplish force transmission upon locomotion. In contrast to mammalian cells, Dictyostelium discoideum ( a soil dwelling amoeba) cells do not express integrins forming focal adhesions but are believed to rely on more generic interaction forces that guarantee a larger flexibility; even the ability to swim has been described for Dictyostelium discoideum (D.d.).”*

In order to understand the origin of D.d. adhesion, Nadine Kamprad, Hannes Witt, Marcel Schröder, Christian Titus Kreis, Oliver Bäumchen, Andreas Janshoff and Marco Tarantola  describe in their publication “Adhesion strategies of Dictyostelium discoideum – a force spectroscopy study”* how they realized and modified a variety of conditions for the amoeba comprising the absence and presence of the specific adhesion protein Substrate Adhesion A (sadA), glycolytic degradation, ionic strength, surface hydrophobicity and strength of van der Waals interactions by generating tailored model substrates. By employing AFM-based single cell force spectroscopy (using NanoWorld Arrow-TL2 tipless cantilevers) they could show that experimental force curves upon retraction exhibit two regimes described in detail in the article cited above. The study describes a versatile mechanism that allows the cells to adhere to a large variety of natural surfaces under various conditions.

Fig. 2 A from "Adhesion strategies of Dictyostelium discoideum – a force spectroscopy study": Cell parametrization: β, angle between the normal on the cell membrane and the cell axis; R1, contact radius between the cell and substrate; R0, equatorial cell radius; R2, contact radius between the cell and cantilever, ϕ1 contact angle towards the substrate; ϕ2, contact angle between the cell and cantilever, in the background is a section of the confocal image in B. B: morphology of the carA-1-GFP labelled D.d. cell attached to the cantilever subjected to a pulling force of 0.2 nN. NanoWorld Arrow-TL2 tipless cantilevers were used.
Fig. 2 A from “Adhesion strategies of Dictyostelium discoideum – a force spectroscopy study” by N. Kamprad et al.: Cell parametrization: β, angle between the normal on the cell membrane and the cell axis; R1, contact radius between the cell and substrate; R0, equatorial cell radius; R2, contact radius between the cell and cantilever, ϕ1 contact angle towards the substrate; ϕ2, contact angle between the cell and cantilever, in the background is a section of the confocal image in B. B: morphology of the carA-1-GFP labelled D.d. cell attached to the cantilever subjected to a pulling force of 0.2 nN.

*Nadine Kamprad, Hannes Witt, Marcel Schröder, Christian Titus Kreis, Oliver Bäumchen, Andreas Janshoff, Marco Tarantola
Adhesion strategies of Dictyostelium discoideum – a force spectroscopy study
Nanoscale, 2018, 10, 22504-22519
DOI: 10.1039/C8NR07107A

To read the full article follow this external link: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2018/nr/c8nr07107a

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