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The Extracellular Electrical Resistivity in Cell Adhesion

Department of Membrane and Neurophysics, Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Martinsried/Munich, Germany

Correspondence: Address reprint requests to Peter Fromherz, Dept. of Membrane and Neurophysics, Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Martinsried/Munich, Germany 82152. E-mail: fromherz{at}biochem.mpg.de.

The interaction of cells in a tissue depends on the nature of the extracellular matrix. The electrical properties of the narrow extracellular space are unknown. Here we consider cell adhesion mediated by extracellular matrix protein on a solid substrate as a model system. We culture human embryonic kidney (HEK293) cells on silica coated with fibronectin and determine the electrical resistivity in the cell-solid junction by combining measurements of the sheet resistance and of the distance between membrane and substrate. The sheet resistance is obtained from phase fluorometry of the voltage-sensitive dye ANNINE-5 by alternating-current stimulation from the substrate. The distance is measured by fluorescence interference contrast microscopy. We change the resistivity of the bath in a range from to and find that the sheet resistance is proportionally enhanced, but that the distance is invariant around . In all cases, the resulting resistivity is indistinguishable from the resistivity of the bath. A similar result is obtained for rat neurons cultured on polylysine. On that basis, we propose a "bulk resistivity in cell adhesion" model for cell-solid junctions. The observations suggest that the electrical interaction between cells in a tissue is determined by an extracellular space with the electrical properties of bulk electrolyte.

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