Joint CeNS-Colloquium with the SFB1032

Title: "Towards a mechanical control of neuronal network formation"
Location: online via meetanyway, link to registration
Hosts: Prof. Joachim Rädler (B01)

see also CeNS-colloquiums-website

Summary:

The bottom-up assembly of complex systems promises their fundamental understanding. In many cases, however, this assembly is still beyond our experimental reach - a prime example therefore is our brain. In recent years, researchers have engineered multicellular 3D systems, organoids, which share the same cell types and tissue organization as their in vivo counterparts. Those in vitro models now provide an opportunity to glimpse at how biology self-assembles neuronal networks and how nanoscale building blocks, such as cell-cell adhesion molecules, contribute to the formation of organoid shape, structure and function.
In this seminar I will present the current and future research of our newly established ERC-group. We will explore, how tissue mechanical properties depend on cell-cell adhesion molecules to control the formation of retina organoids. For this, we build on our expertise in mechanics measurements^[1,2] and retina organoid technology.
Quantifying the mechanics of neuronal systems holds the potential for establishing a biophysical understanding how neuronal networks are formed. In addition, it opens the door to neurodegenerative disease modeling as it will be performed, for example, by our group.

1. Serwane F., Mongera A., Rowghanian P., Kealhofer D., Lucio A., Hockenbery Z., Campas O. In vivo quantification of spatially varying mechanical properties in developing tissues. Nature Methods, 14, 181-186, 2017
2. Mongera A., Gustafson H., Rowghanian P., Shelton E., Kealhofer D., Serwane F., Lucio A., Giammona J., Campas O., A fluid-tosolid jamming transition underlies vertebrate body axis elongation. Nature, 561, 401-405, 2018