Cellular response to micropatterned growth promoting and inhibitory substrates.

BACKGROUND: Normal development and the response to injury both require cell growth, migration and morphological remodeling, guided by a complex local landscape of permissive and inhibitory cues. A standard approach for studying by such cues is to culture cells on uniform substrates containing known concentrations of these molecules, however this method fails to represent the molecular complexity of the natural growth environment. RESULTS: To mimic the local complexity of environmental conditions in vitro, we used a contact micropatterning technique to examine cell growth and differentiation on patterned substrates printed with the commonly studied growth permissive and inhibitory substrates, poly-L-lysine (PLL) and myelin, respectively. We show that micropatterning of PLL can be used to direct adherence and axonal outgrowth of hippocampal and cortical neurons as well as other cells with diverse morphologies like Oli-neu oligodendrocyte progenitor cell lines and fibroblast-like COS7 cells in culture. Surprisingly, COS7 cells exhibited a preference for low concentration (1 pg/mL) PLL zones over adjacent zones printed with high concentrations (1 mg/mL). We demonstrate that micropatterning is also useful for studying factors that inhibit growth as it can direct cells to grow along straight lines that are easy to quantify. Furthermore, we provide the first demonstration of microcontact printing of myelin-associated proteins and show that they impair process outgrowth from Oli-neu oligodendrocyte precursor cells. CONCLUSION: We conclude that microcontact printing is an efficient and reproducible method for patterning proteins and brain-derived myelin on glass surfaces in order to study the effects of the microenvironment on cell growth and morphogenesis.

Atomic force microscopy reveals important differences in axonal resistance to injury.

Axonal degeneration after traumatic brain injury and nerve compression is considered a common underlying cause of temporary as well as permanent disability. Because a proper functioning of neural network requires phase coherence of all components, even subtle changes in circuitry may lead to network failure. However, it is still not possible to determine which axons will recover or degenerate after injury. Several groups have studied the pressure threshold for axonal injury within a nerve, but difficulty accessing the injured region; insufficient imaging methods and the extremely small dimensions involved have prevented the evaluation of the response of individual axons to injury. We combined microfluidics with atomic force microscopy and in vivo imaging to estimate the threshold force required to 1), uncouple axonal transport without impairing axonal survival, and 2), compromise axonal survival in both individual and bundled axons. We found that rat hippocampal axons completely recover axonal transport with no detectable axonal loss when compressed with pressures up to 65 ± 30 Pa for 10 min, while dorsal root ganglia axons can resist to pressures up to 540 ± 220 Pa. We investigated the reasons for the differential susceptibility of hippocampal and DRG axons to mechanical injury and estimated the elasticity of live axons. We found that dorsal root ganglia axons have a 20% lower elastic modulus than hippocampal axons. Our results emphasize the importance of the integrity of the axonal cytoskeleton in deciding the axonal fate after damage and open up new avenues to improve injury diagnosis and to identify ways to protect axons.

Rapid assembly of functional presynaptic boutons triggered by adhesive contacts.

CNS synapse assembly typically follows after stable contacts between "appropriate" axonal and dendritic membranes are made. We show that presynaptic boutons selectively form de novo following neuronal fiber adhesion to beads coated with poly-d-lysine (PDL), an artificial cationic polypeptide. As demonstrated by atomic force and live confocal microscopy, functional presynaptic boutons self-assemble as rapidly as 1 h after bead contact, and are found to contain a variety of proteins characteristic of presynaptic endings. Interestingly, presynaptic compartment assembly does not depend on the presence of a biological postsynaptic membrane surface. Rather, heparan sulfate proteoglycans, including syndecan-2, as well as others possibly adsorbed onto the bead matrix or expressed on the axon surface, are required for assembly to proceed by a mechanism dependent on the dynamic reorganization of F-actin. Our results indicate that certain (but not all) nonspecific cationic molecules like PDL, with presumably electrostatically mediated adhesive properties, can effectively bypass cognate and natural postsynaptic ligands to trigger presynaptic assembly in the absence of specific target recognition. In contrast, we find that postsynaptic compartment assembly depends on the prior presence of a mature presynaptic ending.

Dynamics of presynaptic protein recruitment induced by local presentation of artificial adhesive contacts.

In this study, we introduce a novel approach to induce and observe the formation of presynaptic compartments in axons through a combination of atomic force microscopy (AFM) and fluorescence microscopy. First, we use a poly-D-lysine-coated bead attached to an AFM tip to induce the recruitment of two synaptic proteins, bassoon and synaptophysin, and measure their absolute arrival times to the presynaptic department. We find that bassoon arrives before synaptophysin. Second, we observe the formation of very long (several 10s of µm), structured, protein-containing membranous strings as the AFM tip was withdrawn from the axon. It is conceivable that these strings might be a novel mechanism by which new neurites or branch points along existing neurites may be generated in situ.

Substrate Micropatterning as a New in Vitro Cell Culture System to Study Myelination.

Myelination is a highly regulated developmental process whereby oligodendrocytes in the central nervous system and Schwann cells in the peripheral nervous system ensheathe axons with a multilayered concentric membrane. Axonal myelination increases the velocity of nerve impulse propagation. In this work, we present a novel in vitro system for coculturing primary dorsal root ganglia neurons along with myelinating cells on a highly restrictive and micropatterned substrate. In this new coculture system, neurons survive for several weeks, extending long axons on defined Matrigel tracks. On these axons, myelinating cells can achieve robust myelination, as demonstrated by the distribution of compact myelin and nodal markers. Under these conditions, neurites and associated myelinating cells are easily accessible for studies on the mechanisms of myelin formation and on the effects of axonal damage on the myelin sheath.

Lipid bilayer membrane-triggered presynaptic vesicle assembly.

The formation of functional synapses on artificial substrates is a very important step in the development of engineered in vitro neural networks. Spherical supported bilayer lipid membranes (SS-BLMs) are used here as a novel substrate to demonstrate presynaptic vesicle accumulation at an in vitro synaptic junction. Confocal fluorescence microscopy, cryo-transmission electron microscopy (cryo-TEM), and fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) experiments have been used to characterize the SS-BLMs. Conventional immunocytochemistry combined with confocal fluorescence microscopy was used to observe the formation of presynaptic vesicles at the neuron-SS-BLM contacts. These results indicate that lipid phases may play a role in the observed phenomenon, in addition to the chemical and electrostatic interactions between the neurons and SS-BLMs. The biocompatibility of lipid bilayers along with their membrane tunability makes the suggested approach a useful "toolkit" for many neuroengineering applications including artificial synapse formation and synaptogenesis in vivo.

GAP-43 is key to mitotic spindle control and centrosome-based polarization in neurons.

In neurons, the position of the centrosome during final mitosis marks the point of emergence of the future axon. However, the molecular underpinnings linking centrosome position to axon emergence are unknown. GAP-43 is a calmodulin-binding IQ motif protein that regulates neuronal cytoskeletal architecture by interacting with F-actin in a phosphorylation dependent manner. Here we show that GAP-43 is associated with the centrosome and plays a critical role in mitosis and acquisition of neuronal polarity in cerebellar granule neurons. In the absence of GAP-43, the centrosome position is delinked from process outgrowth and is only capable of mediating morphological polarization, however molecular specification of the axonal compartment does not take place. These results show that GAP-43 is required to link centrosome position to process outgrowth in order to generate neuronal polarity in cerebellar granule cells.

Lock-and-key effect in the surface diffusion of large organic molecules probed by STM.

A nanoscale understanding of the complex dynamics of large molecules at surfaces is essential for the bottom-up design of molecular nanostructures. Here we show that we can change the diffusion coefficient of the complex organic molecule known as Violet Lander (VL, C(108)H(104)) on Cu(110) by two orders of magnitude by using the STM at low temperatures to switch between two adsorption configurations that differ only in the molecular orientation with respect to the substrate lattice. From an interplay with molecular dynamics simulations, we interpret the results within a lock-and-key model similar to the one driving the recognition between biomolecules: the molecule (key) is immobilized only when its orientation is such that the molecular shape fits the atomic lattice of the surface (lock); otherwise the molecule is highly mobile.