Arvind Gopinath, PhD

Associate Professor

University of California Merced

Host: Sachin Velankar

Substrate and Boundary Mediated Elastic Interactions Guide Single and Collective Cell Migration

Abstract: The mechanical microenvironment of cells influences key aspects of cell structure and function including cell motility. Motile, and adherent cells are both known to exert significant contractile stresses on underlying soft substrates. The ensuing deformation field not only offers a read-out of the elastic properties of the substrate, but also provides a physical mechanism by which spatially separated cells may sense each other and coordinate their motion. Motivated by this idea and inspired by recent experiments, we propose an active Brownian dynamics model for cell migration that incorporates mechanical cell–cell, substrate-cell, and cell-boundary interactions. I will first describe computational experiments that aid our understanding of clustering and collective motility in two-cell and multi-cell systems. We compute key metrics such as the dispersion of cell trajectories, frequency of contact, and development of stable cell clusters, and compare these with experiments. I will then discuss how Brownian dynamics simulations combined with adaptations of Kramer’s barrier crossing theory may be used to investigate durotaxis – that is, the directed migration of cells from soft to stiffer regions of substrates.  

Bio: Arvind Gopinath is Associate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of California Merced (UCM). Arvind earned his PhD from Cornell University in 2001 advised by Donald Koch in Chemical Engineering and was then as postdoctoral scholar, first with Robert Armstrong at MIT and then with L Mahadevan at Harvard. Arvind joined UCM in 2015 and the department of Bioengineering in 2017. Research in his group currently centers on biological soft matter, living multiphase systems such as bacteria swarms and biofilms, cell motility, and the statistical physics of active polymers.