Join the biocontrol seminar tomorrow to hear about the fun things we are doing with controlling cells!

For more details, check out the preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... - or ask anything here! (+here's a bonus movie that didn't quite make the cut) 🌀

Control was also nicely robust - we demonstrate control of nuclear intensity within the same cell, multiple times!

Of course, what's the use of making little cell robots if you can't control a few at once with some communication with each other? Here, we added an 'active avoidance' system, giving each cell a searchlight and temporarily reversing migration when a collision is imminent.

If we changed the irradiance over time (in-between loops), we could even slow down and speed up the cells, demonstrating even further control and making use of the dose-responsiveness of optogenetics.

We first tested this with directed cell migration, with the 'outcome' being to guide cells to specific migration paths. Using optogenetic recruitment of TIAM1 (Coppey lab), we could automatically update an area of illumination and precisely guide cells to predefined paths, like little tiny robots! 🤖

Expansion Microscopy is always amazing to me - here is a dividing U2OS cell expanded ~10X and imaged using a 25X objective! 🔬 A total protein stain using maleimide gives further context. #FluorescenceFriday

Sure! 🐌

Klaus Hahn has some classic movies of manually directing migration: tinyurl.com/49ftza3h. The Weiner lab use HL60 (v fast) continually illuminating one side: tinyurl.com/mryvy9m7 . Here is an example of our automatic guidance of HT1080 (slower) to specific paths, look out for a bioRxiv upload soon!🌀