Microrobotics and Microfluidics for Quantifying the Growth Mechanics of Plant Cells

Understanding the mechanisms of plant growth and morphogenesis is important not only in the field of plant sciences, but also in a broader agricultural and economic context, as plants provide important raw materials such as food, fiber, wood and fuel. In our lab, we are developing microrobotic and microfluidic systems to characterize the biomechanics of plant cells, to investigate the effect of external mechanical stress and force on plant growth and development.

An ideal model system to study the impact of biomechanics and mechanical cues at a single-cell level is the pollen tube (PT), a cellular protrusion which transports sperm cells from the grain to the ovules. The PT is one of the fastest growing cells with in vivo growth rates reaching around 2.7 µm/s in maize. Despite its small diameter in the range of 5-15 µm, the PT can grow up to 30 cm in length while precisely navigating towards the ovule using various guidance cues.

Contacts:
Jan T. Burri: burrija@ethz.ch
Nino F. Läubli: laeublin@ethz.ch
Prof. Bradley J. Nelson: bnelson@ethz.ch
 
Former members:
Dr. Chengzhi Hu: hucz@sustc.edu.cn
Dr. Dimitris Felekis: dfelekis@ethz.ch
Dr. Naveen Shamsudhin: snaveen@ethz.ch
Dr. Simon Muntwyler: simon.muntwyler@femtotools.com
Dr. Felix Beyeler : felix.beyeler@femtotools.com
 
References:

Felekis, D., Vogler, H., Mecja, G., Muntwyler, S., Nestorova, A., Huang, T., Sakar, Mahmut S., Grossniklaus, U., & Nelson, B. J. (2015). Real-time automated characterization of 3D morphology and mechanics of developing plant cells. International Journal of Robotics Research, 34(8), 1136–1146. http://doi.org/10.1177/0278364914564231

Burri, J. T., Hu, C., Shamsudhin, N., Wang, X., Vogler, H., Grossniklaus, U., & Nelson, B. J. (2016). Dual-axis Cellular Force Microscope for mechanical characterization of living plant cells. IEEE International Conference on Automation

Science and Engineering, 942–947. http://doi.org/10.1109/COASE.2016.7743504

Burri, J. T., Vogler, H., Läubli, N. F., Hu, C., Grossniklaus, U., & Nelson, B. J. (2018). Feeling the force: how pollen tubes deal with obstacles. New Phytologist, 220(1). http://doi.org/10.1111/nph.15260

Shamsudhin, N., Laeubli, N., Atakan, H.B., Vogler, H., Hu, C., Haeberle, W, Sebastian, A., Grossniklaus, A., Nelson, B. J. (2016) Massively Parallelized Pollen Tube Guidance and Mechanical Measurements on a Lab-on-a-Chip Platform. PLOS ONE, 12(2): e017198 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0168138

Läubli, N., Shamsudhin, N., Ahmed, D., & Nelson, B. J. (2017). Controlled Three dimensional Rotation of Single Cells Using Acoustic Waves. Procedia CIRP, 65, 93–98. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.procir.2017.04.028