<i>Contact</i>Blot: Microfluidic Control and Measurement of the Cell-Cell Contact State to Assess Contact-Inhibited ERK Signaling.

ABSTRACT: Extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) signaling is essential to regulated cell behaviors, including cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. The influence of cell-cell contacts on ERK signaling is central to epithelial cells, yet few studies have sought to understand the same in cancer cells, particularly with single-cell resolution. To acquire same-cell measurements of both phenotypic (cell-contact state) and targeted-protein (ERK phosphorylation) profiles, we prepend high-content, whole-cell imaging prior to end-point cellular-resolution Western blot analyses for each of hundreds of individual HeLa cancer cells cultured on that same chip, which we call contactBlot. By indexing the phosphorylation level of ERK in each cell or cell cluster to the imaged cell-contact

SUBMITTER: Zhang Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11447967 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature