title: A Macro-to-Micro Interface for the Control of Cellular Organization.
abstract: The spatial organization of cellular communities plays a fundamental role in determining intercellular communication and emergent behavior. However, few tools exist to modulate tissue organization at the scale of individual cells, particularly in the case of dynamic manipulation. Micromechanical reconfigurable culture achieves dynamic control of tissue organization by culturing adherent cells on microfabricated plates that can be shifted to reorganize the arrangement of the cells. While biological studies utilizing this approach have been previously reported, this paper focuses on the engineering of the device, including the mechanism for translating manual manipulation to precise microscale position control, fault-tolerant design for manufacture, and the synthetic-to-living interface.
authors.affiliation: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA. He is now with the Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697 USA (phone: 949-824-8723; fax: 949-824-1727; eehui@uci.edu ).
authors.forename: Elliot E
authors.initials: EE
authors.lastname: Hui
authors.affiliation: Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA ( chunli@alum.mit.edu ).
authors.forename: Chun
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA ( agrawal.amit@gmail.com ).
authors.forename: Amit
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Agrawal
authors.affiliation: Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA ( sbhatia@mit.edu ).
authors.forename: Sangeeta N
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Bhatia
keywords: Biological cells; Micromechanical devices; Tissue engineering