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APS-DBIO

May 20, 2021 • 12 tweets • 8 min read • Read on X

It's #DBIOtweetorial time! Your host, Wallace Marshall. Welcome to 10 Crazy Things Cells Do. We hope to get you thinking about the complexity of cells + challenges in learning physical principles that underly cell behavior. Let's get started!
#EngageDBIO #XtremeCellBiology.

Cells can be really big. Many cells are small, but some are gigantic. Each little "plant" in this picture is a single algal cell, Acetabularia, more than 10 cm long. What determines the size of cells? bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…

@BEuplotes

Cells can walk. You think of cells creeping along on a glass slide, but cells can move in more complex ways. @BEuplotes studies cells that can walk using 14 tiny feet. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Cells can go left. Humans + other animals show clear left-right asymmetry. Arises from asymmetry of amino acids from which we are built. Molecular asymmetry of life --> when cells are put in uniform chemoattractant, they tend to polarize and move left. pnas.org/content/104/22…

Cells can steal organelles from other cells. Some sea slugs can photosynthesize by stealing chloroplasts from other cells, and putting them inside their own cells, a behavior called kleptoplasty.
elifesciences.org/articles/64057

Cells can break into pieces. Under stress, some cells break into tiny pieces called cytoplasts or microplasts. Although missing all organelles, microplasts still move and even chemotax.
jlb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.10…

Cells can sense electricity. We think about cells following chemical signals or light, but electric fields? Yes! Galvanotaxis is important for cells to heal wounds in epithelia.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23541731/

Cells can solve mazes. We know cells can make simple decisions, but the giant amoeba Physarum can solve computationally hard problems like finding the shortest path through a maze.
nature.com/articles/35035…

Cells can see. Many cells can sense light, but some predatory dinoflagellates have evolved camera-like eyes complete with lens. Can they see shapes, or maybe distance to a target?
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25734540/

Cells can explode. About the most extreme thing you can do is explode. Cells of the fungus Magnaporthe build a rigid wall, fill up with osmotically active molecules, and then explode like a bomb to punch a hole in plant cell walls.
plantcell.org/content/19/8/2…

Cells can eat your brain and control your mind. Toxoplasma is a protist that eats holes in your brain. Some have speculated it can change your personality, and not necessarily for the better.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31756184/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22265631/

@WallaceUCSF

Huge thanks to the #EngageDBIO team for making this #DBIOTweetorial possible! We hope you enjoyed hearing about the crazy things cells can do, and will think about how these behaviors are generated by molecules. DM me with your thoughts @WallaceUCSF

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APS-DBIO

@ApsDbio

Oct 7, 2021

@v_madhu

Hello and welcome to this week’s #DBIOTweetorial by Prof. Madhusudhan Venkadesan @v_madhu. Let’s go!

Feet and fins are quite different in their anatomy. But both have to be stiff enough to withstand the forces of propulsion. Are there deeper connections between them?

Paper: dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature…
Video:

All land vertebrates, or tetrapods, evolved from aquatic ancestors over 370 million years ago. So we and all land vertebrates are fish, in a manner of speaking!

Limbs evolved from fins, but the earliest tetrapod probably used a fin to move on land.

Ref: jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16…

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Aug 5, 2021

@wbialek

Hello, it's a gorgeous Thursday! Time for a #DBIOTweetorial. A special edition this week — an inaugural *Editweetorial* by your host today, Prof. Bill Bialek @wbialek. #DBIOEditweetorial

Biological systems are complicated. If we try to make “realistic” models we are led into a forest of parameters. If we are going to have a theoretical physicist’s understanding of life, we have to find principles that cut through this complexity.

Maybe a #DBIOEditweetorial provides just enough space to summarize different strategies in the search for principles. Links are to papers that illustrate these ideas, and of course are just a sampling. Please respond with your own favorites.

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Jun 17, 2021

@goleylab

Have you seen images of bacteria and wondered, “How do they form such strange shapes?” or “Why do they all look so different?” Join us for today's #DBIOTweetorial as we dive into how and why bacteria adopt the shapes they do! #EngageDBIO @goleylab @jordanmbarrows

As Kevin Young eloquently put it, “To be brutally honest, few people care that bacteria have different shapes. Which is a shame, because the bacteria seem to care very much.” Check out how diverse bacterial shapes can be! tinyurl.com/6d93vce4 tinyurl.com/uvbtwvs3

Bacterial shape is largely determined by the peptidoglycan (PG) cell wall, a large macromolecule that surrounds cells and provides structure and support. PG is necessary to maintain cell shape - cells burst when treated with drugs that target PG!
tinyurl.com/m4dys6hb

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Jun 10, 2021

@NatashaMhatre

Are the screaming BroodX cicadas driving you nuts? Wonder how such tiny insects even make such a racket? You’ve come to the right place! I study how insects make and hear sound. By the end of this I hope I can show what biophysical marvels they are! #DBIOTweetorial @NatashaMhatre

@drussellpsu

So what is sound? It’s a disturbance in a medium, generated by a moving object. In this cool gif, by @drussellpsu, you can you see a grey bar moving back and forth within a pipe. The air in the pipe is pushed around, and the disturbance within it (sound) travels through the air.

So anything that moves makes a sound?

Yup, pretty much! The world is full of it: the wind shakes leaves, they rustle; tires vibrate because of friction, and they rumble.

But how ‘loud’ the sound is depends on quite a few things!

frontiersin.org/articles/10.33…

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Jun 3, 2021

@gibbological

It's #DBIOtweetorial time, with your host @gibbological from @isbsci. Today, you'll get some facts about the ~10^13 microbes that call your gut home. By the end, I hope that you'll see yourself as much more than a mere human. You are an ecosystem! #EngageDBIO #microbiome 💩🦠🧑‍🔬

In the womb, we are sterile (obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…). At birth, our mothers (and surrounding environment) act as our 'sour-dough starter culture,' inoculating us with hundreds-to-thousands of species. The exact composition of this 'microbiome' is as unique to us as our genome.

Topologically speaking, humans are doughnuts. The entire outside of this doughnut is *covered* in microbes (mostly bacteria). Most of our microbes live in the colon. There are about 3*10^13 human cells and 4*10^13 bacterial cells in the body (doi.org/10.1371/journa…).

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May 27, 2021

@BhamlaLab

It's #DBIOtweetorial time! Your host is Saad Bhamla @BhamlaLab. Today we'll learn about 10 ultrafast movements in organisms - from single cells to multicellular beasts. We hope to get you thinking engg+bio+physics of extreme movements.
#EngageDBIO #UltrafastOrganisms.

Contrary to common perception, cheetahs and falcons are not the fastest animals. Mantis shrimps for example can use a saddle-shaped spring to hammer at ~100,000 m/s^2. This is so blazing fast, it cavitates surrounding fluid. nature.com/articles/42881…

Trap jaw ants use their spring-loaded jaws to jump at faster acceleration of 10^6 m/s^2 in 0.06 ms. Faster than the blink of an eye or a bullet from a gun !! How to build robots at this scale and speed remains an open challenge. pnas.org/content/103/34…