segmenting-growth-endothelial-cells-6-well-plates-on-an-orbital

Segmenting Growth of Endothelial Cells in 6-Well Plates on an Orbital Shaker for Mechanobiological Studies

Shear stress imposed on the arterial wall by the flow of blood affects endothelial cell morphology and function. Low magnitude, oscillatory and ...

Imperial College London

Effects of shear stress on endothelium are important for the normal physiology of blood vessels and are implicated in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. They have been extensively studied in vitro. In one paradigm, endothelial cells are cultured in devices that produce spatially varying shear stress profiles, and the local profile is compared with the properties of cells at the same position. A flaw in this class of experiments is that cells exposed to a certain shear profile in one location may release mediators into the medium that alter the behaviour of cells at another location, experiencing different shear, thus obscuring or corrupting the true relation between shear and cell properties.

A novel method for segmenting growth of cells in sheared endothelial culture reveals the secretion of an anti-inflammatory mediator.

The alignment of arterial endothelial cells (ECs) with the mean wall shear stress (WSS) vector is the prototypical example of their responsiveness to flow. However, evidence for this behaviour rests on experiments where many WSS metrics had the same orientation or where they were incompletely characterized. In the present study, we tested the phenomenon more rigorously. Aortic ECs were cultured in cylindrical wells on the platform of an orbital shaker. In this system, orientation would differ depending on the WSS metric to which the cells aligned. Variation in flow features and hence in possible orientations was further enhanced by altering the viscosity of the medium. Orientation of endothelial nuclei was compared with WSS characteristics obtained by computational fluid dynamics. At low mean WSS magnitudes, ECs aligned with the modal WSS vector, while at high mean WSS magnitudes they aligned so as to minimize the shear acting across their long axis (transverse WSS). Their failure to align with the mean WSS vector implies that other aspects of endothelial behaviour attributed to this metric require re-examination. The evolution of a mechanism for minimizing transverse WSS is consistent with it having detrimental effects on the cells and with its putative role in atherogenesis.

Mehwish Arshad

Department of Bioengineering

Imperial College London

Segmenting Growth of Endothelial Cells in 6-Well Plates on an Orbital Shaker for Mechanobiological Studies

Mehwish Arshad

.css-o250i3{font-size:18px;font-family:Open Sans,sans-serif;line-height:21.6px;}Department of Bioengineering

Imperial College London

Segmenting Growth of Endothelial Cells in 6-Well Plates on an Orbital Shaker for Mechanobiological Studies

Department of Bioengineering