System to study colony-colony interactions in embryonic stem cells

Many efforts have been made to characterize the necessary regulatory factors involved in self-renewal of embryonic stem cells (ESCs). Recent studies suggested that different autocrine factors exist in murine ESCs (mESCs) and can influence their self-renewal and proliferation, predominantly in deficiency conditions. These observations were investigated based on a comparison of different groups of mESCs that were plated at varying cell densities. In this study, we developed an experimental platform to study colony-colony interactions in mESCs. We have used stencil cell patterning to precisely localize mESC colonies on the culture substrate. This technique allows the formation of mESC colonies with precise shape and controllable inter-colony distances. We monitored colony proliferation, motility and fusion in response to different initial colony configurations over time using the developed image analysis algorithms and immunohistochemistry techniques. Different cultivating conditions commonly used for mESCs were tested to identify the environment where autocrine signaling is significant.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Sampattavanich, Somponnat

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Joel Voldman.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/40880

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/40880