Live-cell imaging under centrifugation characterized the cellular force for nuclear centration in the Caenorhabditis elegans embryo.

ABSTRACT: Organelles in cells are appropriately positioned, despite crowding in the cytoplasm. However, our understanding of the force required to move large organelles, such as the nucleus, inside the cytoplasm is limited, in part owing to a lack of accurate methods for measurement. We devised a novel method to apply forces to the nucleus of living, wild-type Caenorhabditis elegans embryos to measure the force generated inside the cell. We utilized a centrifuge polarizing microscope (CPM) to apply centrifugal force and orientation-independent differential interference contrast (OI-DIC) microscopy to characterize the mass density of the nucleus and cytoplasm. The cellular forces moving the nucleus toward the cell center increased linearly at ~14 pN/μm depending on the distance from the center

SUBMITTER: Goda M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10802357 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature