Quick Update on the Racing Cells which Arrived Safely to our Lab

DavidQueller, Joan Strassman, Debbie Brock, Tracy Douglas, Susanne DiSalvo, andSuegene Noh We trust innature’s ability to create the ultimate competitor. Whether they are traversingthe depths of soil to hunt the perfect morsel, or tracking a chemical signalthrough a synthetic maze, wild Dicty cells will crush the competition and provethat nature knows best.link to the lab page GuillaumeCharras Contractility is a key for efficient migration in confined environments. So we doped up our cells to make them fast and furious. Let's just hope they can still steer like Vin Diesel...link to the lab page With the ‘need for speed’, our chemotaxing neutrophil HL-60s do not require nitrous oxide. Instead, we have souped-up and enhanced the cells Calcium-signaling pathways to ‘GO NEUTRO’!!  link to the lab page Terri Bruce ,link to the lab page We are a group of three cell biology obsessives who worked together a few years back but have since gone our separate ways.  We believe that evolution has made cells about as effective as they can be, so the best ways of improving migration are to amplify the cells' own traits, rather than by wholesale changes.link to the lab page Carsten Beta If you want to run fast, you should not be sticking to the ground too much. Therefore, our athletes carry a mutation that results in decreased cell-substrate adhesion.link to the lab page Jan Faix Following theOlympic games over the past decades clearly illustrated that perfection ofcertain skills requires specialized adaptations for each discipline. We aretherefore confident that genetic manipulation of the motility machinery couldbe very helpful to boost speed during chemotaxis towards cAMP.link to the lab page Peter vanHaastert, Arjan Kortholt, InekeKeizer-Gunnink, Rama Kataria , The combination of natural and artificial selection has resulted in excellent axenic Dictyostelium strains.  Our "lab work horse" AX3 moves very efficiently in a cAMP-gradient using a combination of complex signaling pathways. To further improve chemotaxis efficiency we generated a mutant with overexpression of a protein that amplifies the basic signaling pathways.  link to the lab page Annette Müller-Taubenberger, Matthias Samereier We’re sending a low-adhesive mutant into battle! Instead of forming excessive adhesion complexes, these cells dash through any maze, while their fellow competitors are still busy de-adhering.link to the lab page MichaelMyrelink to the lab page link to the lab page Rob Kay, Douwe Veltman,  We have adapted our strategy in response to the setup of the obstacle course that the cells have to navigate in order to win this particular race. Seeing that the corridors of the maze are rather narrow we opted for giving the cells some extra squeezing power. We did this by overexpressing a RacGEF that we speculate enhances the acto/myosin cortex in the back of the cell. This extra power gives the cells an edge over the competition.  link to the lab page EricTschirhart, Sébastien Plancon , link to the lab page Peter Devreotes, Kristen Swaney, Thomas Lampert,  Our lab is testing a number of pharmacological inhibitors at low concentrations, based on the hypothesis that inhibiting the cells' normal spontaneous activity (unrelated to the gradient) will enhance their sensitivity towards the chemoattractant gradient in the device. link to the lab page