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Substrate Stiffness Affects Human Keratinocyte Colony Formation

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Abstract

Restoration of epidermal organization and function in response to a variety of pathophysiological insults is critically dependent on coordinated keratinocyte migration, proliferation, and stratification during the process of wound healing. These processes are mediated by the reconfiguration of both cell–cell (desmosomes, adherens junctions) and cell–matrix (focal adhesions, hemidesmosomes) junctions and the cytoskeletal filament networks that they serve to interconnect. In this study, we investigated the role of substrate elasticity (stiffness) on keratinocyte colony formation in vitro during the process of nascent epithelial sheet formation as triggered by the calcium switch model of keratinocyte culture. Keratinocytes cultured on pepsin digested type I collagen coated soft (nominal E = 1.2 kPa) polyacrylamide gels embedded with fluorescent microspheres exhibited (i) smaller spread contact areas, (ii) increased migration velocities, and (iii) increased rates of colony formation with more cells per colony than did keratinocytes cultured on stiff (nominal E = 24 kPa) polyacrylamide gels. As assessed by tracking of embedded microsphere displacements, keratinocytes cultured on soft substrates generated large local substrate deformations that appeared to recruit adjacent keratinocytes into joining an evolving colony. Together with the observed differences in keratinocyte kinematics and substrate deformations, we developed two ad hoc analyses, termed distance rank and radius of cooperativity, that help to objectively ascribe what we perceive as increasingly cooperative behavior of keratinocytes cultured on soft vs. stiff gels during the process of colony formation. We hypothesize that the differences in keratinocyte colony formation observed in our experiments could be due to cell–cell mechanical signaling generated via local substrate deformations that appear to be correlated with the increased expression of β4 integrin within keratinocytes positioned along the periphery of an evolving cell colony.

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Acknowledgements

Support for this project was provided by the National Institutes of Health (R03-AR063967) and the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust (#14-4384). We thank Kelly Messingham for assistance with immunolabeling, and Janet Fairley, George Giudice, and Thomas Magin for insightful discussions on this work.

Conflict of interest

Hoda Zarkoob, Sandeep Bodduluri, Sailahari V. Ponnaluri, John C. Selby, and Edward A. Sander declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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No human or animal studies or were carried out by the authors for this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, The University of Iowa, 1418 Seamans Center, Iowa City, IA, 52242, USA

    Hoda Zarkoob, Sandeep Bodduluri, Sailahari V. Ponnaluri & Edward A. Sander

  2. Department of Dermatology, Carver College of Medicine, The University of Iowa, 200 Hawkins Drive, Iowa City, IA, 52242, USA

    John C. Selby

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  1. Hoda Zarkoob
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Correspondence to John C. Selby or Edward A. Sander.

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Associate Editor Roger D. Kamm oversaw the review of this article.

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Zarkoob, H., Bodduluri, S., Ponnaluri, S.V. et al. Substrate Stiffness Affects Human Keratinocyte Colony Formation. Cel. Mol. Bioeng. 8, 32–50 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12195-015-0377-8

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