Biomimetic hydrogel based on HET-s amyloïd fibers for long-term culture of primary hippocampal neurons

Julien Hurtaud; Cécile Delacour; Carole Mathevon; Vincent Forge

Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2402.04381

Biomimetic hydrogel based on HET-s amyloïd fibers for long-term culture of primary hippocampal neurons

Julien Hurtaud·Cécile Delacour·Carole Mathevon·Vincent Forge

View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Historically, amyloid fibers (AF) in research has always been linked to degenerative diseases. However, HET-s AF, by their morphology and function, have only little in common to pathogenic amyloid fibers such as α-synuclein or a\b{eta} and they have appeared as promising candidate for biocoating since few years. Here we have shown than HET-s amyloid fibers hydrogel is an extremely polyvalent coating material for the in vitro culture of primary hippocampal neurons. First, the non-cytotoxicity was demonstrated in vitro using standardized ISO protocols. Then, it is shown that in vitro culture of primary hippocampal neurons on HET-s AF hydrogels could last more than 45 days with clear signatures of spontaneous network activity, with which is a feat that not many other coatings have achieved yet. Finally, interactions between the cells, the dendrites and the hydrogels are highlighted, showing that dendrites might be able to penetrate the hydrogels in depth, therefore allowing recordings even within micrometer-thick hydrogels. In the end, those properties combined with group functionalization using standard biochemistry techniques, makes HET-s hydrogels ideal candidates to be used for the long-term growth of neurons as well as other types of cells. This versatility and easiness to use are definitely still unheard, especially for protein material. Due to its ability to transform from dry films to hydrogel when in contact with the extracellular matrix (ECM), it could also be used for in vivo implants, solving the issue of hydrogel damaging during the implant surgery.

Explore related subjects

physics.bio-ph q-bio.NC

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeX RIS

Julien Hurtaud, Cécile Delacour, Carole Mathevon, Vincent Forge. 2024-02-06. Biomimetic hydrogel based on HET-s amyloïd fibers for long-term culture of primary hippocampal neurons. https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.04381

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Signature of mechanically induced cell extrusions in cell size distribution

How a growing tissue organizes its own homeostatic state is a central question in the physics of living matter. We show that when a growing epithelial sheet counteracts increasing cell density by mechanically squeezing cells out of its plane, a homeostatic in-plane pressure emerges as a generalization of a yield stress. We find that in the quasistatic growth limit the homeostatic state is marginally stable, with a pseudogap in the distribution of local distances to the extrusion threshold pressure. Because such mechanically induced extrusions arise from an instability of individual cells, the pseudogap is imprinted in the distribution of cell areas. This provides an image-based way to test for presence of mechanically induced extrusions and we identify this signature in the developing wing epithelium of \textit{D.~melanogaster}. We expect the same principles to apply to confined three-dimensional tissues.

physics.bio-ph↗

arXiv2026

Towards Accurate Prediction of Mutation-Induced Changes in Protein Structure

Proteins can possess numerous mutations relative to their wild-type amino acid sequences with minimal impact to their structure and function. However, in other cases, even a single amino acid mutation relative to the wild-type sequence can lead to a large change in structure or even a disease phenotype. While the accuracy of wild-type protein structure prediction has improved significantly in recent years, it remains difficult to accurately predict the structure of mutant proteins. Here, we characterize the local mutation-induced structural changes in proteins for a dataset of wildtype and the corresponding single-amino acid mutant x-ray crystal structures from the Protein Data Bank (PDB). We find that mutation-induced structural changes in these proteins are localized at the site of the mutation, decaying rapidly with increasing spatial distance from the mutation site. In addition, we evaluate how well AlphaFold3 can recapitulate the observed mutation-induced structural deformations in the x-ray crystal structures. We find that the accuracy of the AlphaFold3 predictions decreases strongly with increasing mutation-induced deformation. In contrast to the results for AlphaFold3, the Pearson correlation between a single physical feature, i.e. the change in solvent accessibility, and the mutation-induced deformation does not depend on the magnitude of the deformation. Our results and analyses provide a framework for further studies aimed at predicting the structural changes in proteins caused by single amino acid mutations.

physics.bio-ph↗

arXiv2026

Biology and Physics

This article frames the relation between biology and physics by characterizing the former as a subdiscipline rather than a special case of the latter. To do this, we posit biological physics as the science of living matter in contrast to classic biophysics, the study of organismal properties by physical techniques. At the scale of the individual cell, living matter is nonunitary, i.e., not composed of aggregated subunits, and has features (e.g., intracellular organizational arrangements and biomolecular condensates) that are unlike any materials of the nonliving world. In transiently or constitutively multicellular forms (social microorganisms, animals, plants), living matter sustains physical processes that are generic (shared with nonliving matter, e.g., subunit communication by molecular diffusion in cellular slime molds), biogeneric (analogous to nonliving matter but realized through cellular activities, e.g., subunit demixing in animal embryos) or nongeneric (pertaining to sui generis materials, e.g., budding of active solids in plants). This "forms of matter" perspective is philosophically situated in the dialectical materialism of Engels and Hessen and the multilevel physicalism of Neurath and the logical empiricists. We counterpose this view to informationism and to genetic and other hierarchically reductionist physical theories of biological systems and highlight open questions regarding incompletely characterized and enigmatic forms of living matter.

physics.bio-ph↗