| The need for determining the fundamental mechanisms that define the interaction of biological systems with underlying materials, both natural and synthetic, is important as humanity endeavors to improve the quality of life of individuals through technology. Recently, much work has focused on the role of material properties on the behavior of cells. Most of these studies have concentrated their efforts on fibroblastic cell lines and more recently different kinds of stems cells. While these cells represent an important subset of cells in complex organisms, they do not manifest cell-cell interactions, a feature of epithelial cells, the most abundant cell type. Epithelial cells represent the largest cell type in the body and introduce an intrinsic complexity when researching the interaction of biological systems with materials. Adherens junctions (AJ) play a significant role in many signaling pathways, and therefore there is need to investigate how physical interactions with underlying substrates affect cell-cell interactions, such as the adhesion properties between cells, as well as how cell-substrate interactions influence the morphology and growth of epithelial cells. In this work I seek to determine the effects and identify mechanisms that epithelial cells use to "read" their environment. To do this I examined changes in cell behavior (growth, morphological, adhesion) of a model epithelium on substrates that have similar composition but significant differences in surface organization. In such a manner, I probed the limitations at which the nanoscale differences in substrate topography affect cellular behavior. |
