Browsing by Author "Jana, Aniket"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Aligned fibers direct collective cell migration to engineer closing and nonclosing wound gaps
    Sharma, Puja; Ng, Colin; Jana, Aniket; Padhi, Abinash; Szymanski, Paige; Lee, Jerry S. H.; Behkam, Bahareh; Nain, Amrinder S. (2017-09-15)
    Cell emergence onto damaged or organized fibrous extracellular matrix (ECM) is a crucial precursor to collective cell migration in wound closure and cancer metastasis, respectively. However, there is a fundamental gap in our quantitative understanding of the role of local ECM size and arrangement in cell emergence-based migration and local gap closure. Here, using ECM-mimicking nanofibers bridging cell monolayers, we describe a method to recapitulate and quantitatively describe these in vivo behaviors over multispatial (single cell to cell sheets) and temporal (minutes to weeks) scales. On fiber arrays with large interfiber spacing, cells emerge (invade) either singularly by breaking cell-cell junctions analogous to release of a stretched rubber band (recoil), or in groups of few cells (chains), whereas on closely spaced fibers, multiple chains emerge collectively. Advancing cells on fibers form cell streams, which support suspended cell sheets (SCS) of various sizes and curvatures. SCS converge to form local gaps that close based on both the gap size and shape. We document that cell stream spacing of 375 mu m and larger hinders SCS advancement, thus providing abilities to engineer closing and nonclosing gaps. Altogether we highlight the importance of studying cell-fiber interactions and matrix structural remodeling in fundamental and translational cell biology.
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    Cytoskeletal Remodeling in Fibrous Environments to Study Pathophysiology
    Jana, Aniket (Virginia Tech, 2021-09-28)
    Mechanical interactions of cells with their immediately surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM) is now known to be critical in pathophysiology. For example, during cancer progression, while uncontrollable cell division leads to tumor formation, the subsequent metastatic migration of cells from the primary tumor site to distant parts of the body causes most cancer-related deaths. The metastatic journey requires cells to be able to adopt different shapes and move persistently through the highly fibrous native ECM, thereby requiring significant spatiotemporal reorganization of the cell cytoskeleton. While numerous studies performed on flat 2-dimensional culture platforms and physiological 3D gels have elucidated cytoskeletal reorganization, our understanding on how cells adapt to natural fibrous microenvironments and regulate their behavior in response to specific ECM biophysical cues including fiber size, spacing, alignment and stiffness remains in infancy. Here, we utilize the non -electrospinning Spinneret tunable engineered parameters (STEP) technique to manufacture ECM mimicking suspended fibrous matrices with precisely controlled fiber diameters, network architecture, inter-fiber spacing and structural stiffness to advance our fundamental understanding of how external cues affect cytoskeleton-based cellular forces in 3-distinct morphological processes of the cell cycle starting from division to spreading and migration. Mechanobiological insights from these studies are implemented to deliver intracellular cargo inside cells using electrical fields. Holistically, we conclude that fibrous environments elicit multiple new cell behaviors never before reported. Specifically, our new findings include (i) design of fiber networks regulates actin networks and cell forces to sculpt nuclei in varying shapes: compressed ovals, tear drop, and invaginations, and drive the nuclear translocation of transcription factors like YAP/TAZ. In all these shapes, nuclei remain rupture-free, thus demonstrating the unique adaptability of cells to fibers, (ii) dense crosshatch networks are fertile environments for persistent 1D migration in 3D shapes of rounded nuclei and low density of actin networks, while sparse fiber networks induce 2D random migration in flattened shapes and well-defined actin stress fibers, (iii) actin retraction fiber-based stability regulates mitotic errors. Cells undergoing mitosis on single fibers exhibit significant 3D movement, and those attached to two fibers can have rotated mitotic machinery, both conditions contributing to erroneous division, and (iv) a bi-phasic force response to electroporation that coincides with actin cytoskeleton remodeling. Cells on suspended fibers can withstand higher electric field abuse, which opens opportunities to deliver cargo of varying sizes inside the cell. Taken altogether, our findings provide new mechanobiological understanding of cell-fiber interactions at high spatiotemporal resolution impacting cell migration, division and nuclear mechanics-key behaviors in the study of pathophysiology.
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    Mitotic outcomes and errors in fibrous environments
    Jana, Aniket; Sarkar, Apurba; Zhang, Haonan; Agashe, Atharva; Wang, Ji; Paul, Raja; Gov, Nir S.; DeLuca, Jennifer G.; Nain, Amrinder S. (National Academy of Sciences, 2023-02-27)
    During mitosis, cells round up and utilize the interphase adhesion sites within the fibrous extracellular matrix (ECM) as guidance cues to orient the mitotic spindles. Here, using suspended ECM-mimicking nanofiber networks, we explore mitotic outcomes and error distribution for various interphase cell shapes. Elongated cells attached to single fibers through two focal adhesion clusters (FACs) at their extremities result in perfect spherical mitotic cell bodies that undergo significant 3-dimensional (3D) displacement while being held by retraction fibers (RFs). Increasing the number of parallel fibers increases FACs and retraction fiber-driven stability, leading to reduced 3D cell body movement, metaphase plate rotations, increased interkinetochore distances, and significantly faster division times. Interestingly, interphase kite shapes on a crosshatch pattern of four fibers undergo mitosis resembling single-fiber outcomes due to rounded bodies being primarily held in position by RFs from two perpendicular suspended fibers. We develop a cortex–astral microtubule analytical model to capture the retraction fiber dependence of the metaphase plate rotations. We observe that reduced orientational stability, on single fibers, results in increased monopolar mitotic defects, while multipolar defects become dominant as the number of adhered fibers increases. We use a stochastic Monte Carlo simulation of centrosome, chromosome, and membrane interactions to explain the relationship between the observed propensity of monopolar and multipolar defects and the geometry of RFs. Overall, we establish that while bipolar mitosis is robust in fibrous environments, the nature of division errors in fibrous microenvironments is governed by interphase cell shapes and adhesion geometries.
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    Tunneling Nanotubes between Cells Migrating in ECM Mimicking Fibrous Environments
    Jana, Aniket; Ladner, Katherine; Lou, Emil; Nain, Amrinder S. (MDPI, 2022-04-14)
    Tunneling nanotubes (TNTs) comprise a unique class of actin-rich nanoscale membranous protrusions. They enable long-distance intercellular communication and may play an integral role in tumor formation, progression, and drug resistance. TNTs are three-dimensional, but nearly all studies have investigated them using two-dimensional cell culture models. Here, we applied a unique 3D culture platform consisting of crosshatched and aligned fibers to fabricate synthetic suspended scaffolds that mimic the native fibrillar architecture of tumoral extracellular matrix (ECM) to characterize TNT formation and function in its native state. TNTs are upregulated in malignant mesothelioma; we used this model to analyze the biophysical properties of TNTs in this 3D setting, including cell migration in relation to TNT dynamics, rate of TNT-mediated intercellular transport of cargo, and conformation of TNT-forming cells. We found that highly migratory elongated cells on aligned fibers formed significantly longer but fewer TNTs than uniformly spread cells on crossing fibers. We developed new quantitative metrics for the classification of TNT morphologies based on shape and cytoskeletal content using confocal microscopy. In sum, our strategy for culturing cells in ECM-mimicking bioengineered scaffolds provides a new approach for accurate biophysical and biologic assessment of TNT formation and structure in native fibrous microenvironments.