System Maintenance Notice

Please note that maintenance work is scheduled between 4 AM and 5 AM - CET. During this time, you may experience reduced performance. Thanks for your patience.

Publications

Journal Article Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Epublish 7 citations

PubMed: 31437196 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0220810

Two distinct actin waves correlated with turns-and-runs of crawling microglia.

PLoS One 14(8):e0220810

Authors: Taeseok Daniel Yang, Kwanjun Park, Jin-Sung Park, Jang-Hoon Lee, Eunpyo Choi, Jonghwan Lee, Wonshik Choi, Youngwoon Choi, Kyoung J Lee

Affiliations

  • School of Biomedical Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea.
  • School of Engineering, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America.
  • Department of Bio-Convergence Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea.
  • Center for Molecular Spectroscopy and Dynamics, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Seoul, South Korea.
  • School of Mechanical Engineering, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, South Korea.
  • Center for Molecular Spectroscopy and Dynamics, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Seoul, South Korea. Department of Physics, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea.
  • Department of Physics, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea.

Abstract

Freely crawling cells are often viewed as randomly moving Brownian particles but they generally exhibit some directional persistence. This property is often related to their zigzag motile behaviors that can be described as a noisy but temporally structured sequence of "runs" and "turns." However, its underlying biophysical mechanism is largely unexplored. Here, we carefully investigate the collective actin wave dynamics associated with the zigzag-crawling movements of microglia (as primary brain immune cells) employing a number of different quantitative imaging modalities including synthetic aperture microscopy and optical diffraction tomography, as well as conventional fluorescence imaging and scanning electron microscopy. Interestingly, we find that microglia exhibit two distinct types of actin waves working at two quite different time scales and locations, and they seem to serve different purposes. One type of actin waves is fast "peripheral ruffles" arising spontaneously with an oscillating period of about 6 seconds at some portion of the leading edge of crawling microglia, where the vigorously biased peripheral ruffles seem to set the direction of a new turn (in 2-D free space). When the cell turning events are inhibited with a physical confinement (in 1-D track), the peripheral ruffles still exist at the leading edge with no bias but showing phase coherence in the cell crawling direction. The other type is "dorsal actin waves" which also exhibits an oscillatory behavior but with a much longer period of around 2 minutes compared to the fast "peripheral ruffles". Dorsal actin waves (whether the cell turning events are inhibited or not) initiate in the lamellipodium just behind the leading edge, travelling down toward the core region of the cell and disappear. Such dorsal wave propagations seem to be correlated with migration of the cell. Thus, we may view the dorsal actin waves are connected with the "run" stage of cell body, whereas the fast ruffles at the leading front are involved in the "turn" stage.

MeSH

Microscopy, Cells, Actins, Exhibitions As Topic, Microglia

Cited by