TY  - JOUR
A1  - Stange, Maike
A1  - Hintsche, Marius
A1  - Sachse, Kirsten
A1  - Gerhardt, Matthias
A1  - Valleriani, Angelo
A1  - Beta, Carsten
T1  - Analyzing the spatial positioning of nuclei in polynuclear giant cells
T2  - Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics
N2  - How cells establish and maintain a well-defined size is a fundamental question of cell biology. Here we investigated to what extent the microtubule cytoskeleton can set a predefined cell size, independent of an enclosing cell membrane. We used electropulse-induced cell fusion to form giant multinuclear cells of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. Based on dual-color confocal imaging of cells that expressed fluorescent markers for the cell nucleus and the microtubules, we determined the subcellular distributions of nuclei and centrosomes in the giant cells. Our two- and three-dimensional imaging results showed that the positions of nuclei in giant cells do not fall onto a regular lattice. However, a comparison with model predictions for random positioning showed that the subcellular arrangement of nuclei maintains a low but still detectable degree of ordering. This can be explained by the steric requirements of the microtubule cytoskeleton, as confirmed by the effect of a microtubule degrading drug.
KW  - Dictyostelium
KW  - cell nucleus
KW  - positioning
KW  - imaging
KW  - spatial poisson distribution
Y1  - 2017
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/49317
SN  - 0022-3727
SN  - 1361-6463
VL  - 50
IS  - 46
PB  - IOP Publ. Ltd.
CY  - Bristol
ER  -