The effect of hypergravity on the shape of myoblasts

Abstract

It is already known that micro gravity affects astronaut’s body. In contrary, hyper-gravity might affect myoblasts. In the present study, mouse muscle cells (C2C12) were cultured four five hours in hyper-gravitational environment (50 G, 100 G) using the centrifugal machine placed in the incubator. Cells were observed at the incubator microscope for 24 hours after stopping centrifugation. The contour of each cell at the time-lapse images was approximated to the ellipsoid and several parameters were calculated: the angle, the area, and the aspect ratio. Each cell tends to shrink from the extended shape under hyper-gravitational environment. The directions of the major axis at 50% of cells tilt to the parallel direction to the hypergravity. After 24 hours, 51% of cells tilt to the perpendicular direction of the hypergravity in the 50 G group. The result shows that the history of hyper-gravitational environment affects the shape of cells.

Keywords

• centrifugal force
• hypergravity
• c2c12
• orientation