Here is an animation of a single cell inside a square shaped microwell. This was part of my PhD work, for more infos about that check my CV on my site www.dusseiller.ch/cv
This was recorded using confocal laser scanning microscopy and the the 3D data was animated using bitplane Imaris.
The goal of the research project was to create 3-dimensional environments for single cells, and thus controlling the shape of the cells. The final goal was to demonstrate that the dimensionality is a crucial cue to influence cell behaviour. A fact that was highly neglected in standard cell culture. To visualize our point i spent a lot of time on new methods to analyze and show our findings using a variety of 3-d tools.
This example shows a epithelial cell grown inside a square microwell of approximately 20 microns width and 10 microns depth. The shape of the cell is highly influenced by the 3-D context and very different from spread cells found on hard and stiff petridishes. The cell membrane was fluorescently labeled and could thus be recorded in microscopy.
