title: Multiaxial Polarity Determines Individual Cellular and Nuclear Chirality.
abstract: Intrinsic cell chirality has been implicated in the left-right (LR) asymmetry of embryonic development. Impaired cell chirality could lead to severe birth defects in laterality. Previously, we detected cell chirality with anin vitromicropatterning system. Here, we demonstrate for the first time that chirality can be quantified as the coordination of multiaxial polarization of individual cells and nuclei. Using an object labeling, connected component based method, we characterized cell chirality based on cell and nuclear shape polarization and nuclear positioning of each cell in multicellular patterns of epithelial cells. We found that the cells adopted a LR bias the boundaries by positioning the sharp end towards the leading edge and leaving the nucleus at the rear. This behavior is consistent with the directional migration observed previously on the boundary of micropatterns. Although the nucleus is chirally aligned, it is not strongly biased towards or away from the boundary. As the result of the rear positioning of nuclei, the nuclear positioning has an opposite chirality to that of cell alignment. Overall, our results have revealed deep insights of chiral morphogenesis as the coordination of multiaxial polarization at the cellular and subcellular levels.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy NY 12180.
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Raymond
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy NY 12180; Center for Biotechnology & Interdisciplinary Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy NY 12180.
authors.forename: Poulomi
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ray
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy NY 12180.
authors.forename: Gurleen
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kaur
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy NY 12180.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fredericks
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy NY 12180; Center for Biotechnology & Interdisciplinary Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy NY 12180.
authors.forename: Ajay V
authors.initials: AV
authors.lastname: Singh
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy NY 12180; Center for Biotechnology & Interdisciplinary Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy NY 12180; Center for Modeling, Simulation and Imaging in Medicine, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy NY 12180.
authors.forename: Leo Q
authors.initials: LQ
authors.lastname: Wan
keywords: Cell Chirality; Cell Morphology; Cell Polarity; Nuclear Morphology