@article{NagelFreyGerhardtetal.2019,
  author    = {Nagel, Oliver and Frey, Manuel and Gerhardt, Matthias and Beta, Carsten},
  title     = {Harnessing Motile Amoeboid Cells as Trucks for Microtransport and -Assembly},
  series = {Advanced science},
  volume    = {6},
  journal   = {Advanced science},
  number    = {3},
  publisher = {Wiley},
  address   = {Hoboken},
  issn      = {2198-3844},
  doi       = {10.1002/advs.201801242},
  pages     = {7},
  year      = {2019},
  abstract  = {Cell-driven microtransport is one of the most prominent applications in the emerging field of biohybrid systems. While bacterial cells have been successfully employed to drive the swimming motion of micrometer-sized cargo particles, the transport capacities of motile adherent cells remain largely unexplored. Here, it is demonstrated that motile amoeboid cells can act as efficient and versatile trucks to transport microcargo. When incubated together with microparticles, cells of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum readily pick up and move the cargo particles. Relying on the unspecific adhesive properties of the amoeba, a wide range of different cargo materials can be used. The cell-driven transport can be directionally guided based on the chemotactic responses of amoeba to chemoattractant gradients. On the one hand, the cargo can be assembled into clusters in a self-organized fashion, relying on the developmentally induced chemotactic aggregation of cells. On the other hand, chemoattractant gradients can be externally imposed to guide the cellular microtrucks to a desired location. Finally, larger cargo particles of different shapes that exceed the size of a single cell by more than an order of magnitude, can also be transported by the collective effort of large numbers of motile cells.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{BarbosaPfannesAnielskiGerhardtetal.2013,
  author    = {Barbosa Pfannes, Eva Katharina and Anielski, Alexander and Gerhardt, Matthias and Beta, Carsten},
  title     = {Intracellular photoactivation of caged cGMP induces myosin II and actin responses in motile cells},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-94984},
  pages     = {1456 -- 1463},
  year      = {2013},
  abstract  = {Cyclic GMP (cGMP) is a ubiquitous second messenger in eukaryotic cells. It is assumed to regulate the association of myosin II with the cytoskeleton of motile cells. When cells of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum are exposed to chemoattractants or to increased osmotic stress, intracellular cGMP levels rise, preceding the accumulation of myosin II in the cell cortex. To directly investigate the impact of intracellular cGMP on cytoskeletal dynamics in a living cell, we released cGMP inside the cell by laser-induced photo-cleavage of a caged precursor. With this approach, we could directly show in a live cell experiment that an increase in intracellular cGMP indeed induces myosin II to accumulate in the cortex. Unexpectedly, we observed for the first time that also the amount of filamentous actin in the cell cortex increases upon a rise in the cGMP concentration, independently of cAMP receptor activation and signaling. We discuss our results in the light of recent work on the cGMP signaling pathway and suggest possible links between cGMP signaling and the actin system.},
  language  = {en}
}