Jean-Jacques Meister

A Swiss citizen, Jean-Jacques Meister was born in 1950. He received a diploma in electrical engineering, then a diploma in physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). He joined the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and obtained a PhD in1983. From 1984 to 1990, he worked in different areas of biophysics and biomedical engineering. His main contributions concern novel noninvasive methods for the prevention and diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases: mechanical properties of the arterial wall, arterial hemodynamics, and Doppler ultrasonography. In 1990, he was recruited as a full professor of experimental physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. He was director of the laboratory of biomedical engineering until 2001, then director of the laboratory of cell biophysics. His fields of research are cellular biophysics: cytoskeleton dynamics, motility & adhesion of cells and calcium dynamics in smooth muscle cells. He spent a sabbatical leave in 2000 at the famous Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts -USA to improve his skills in molecular and cellular biology. His teaching activities include courses in general physics, Newtonian mechanics, biomedical engineering and biophysics presented to undergraduate and graduate EPFL students in physics and engineering. He is author or co-author of more than 230 scientific papers & book chapters and 8 international patents.

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Smooth muscle

Smooth muscle is an involuntary non-striated muscle, so-called because it has no sarcomeres and therefore no striations (bands or stripes). It is divided into two subgroups, single-unit and multiunit

Artery

An artery (: arteries) () is a blood vessel in humans and most animals that takes blood away from the heart to one or more parts of the body (tissues, lungs, brain etc.). Most arteries carry oxygenat

Actin

Actin is a family of globular multi-functional proteins that form microfilaments in the cytoskeleton, and the thin filaments in muscle fibrils. It is found in essentially all eukaryotic cells, where i

Intercellular ultrafast Ca2+ wave in vascular smooth muscle cells: numerical and experimental study

Jean-Jacques Meister, Niccolo Piacentini, Jairo Camilo Quijano Perez, Franck Claude Raynaud

Vascular smooth muscle cells exhibit intercellular Ca2+ waves in response to local mechanical or KCl stimulation. Recently, a new type of intercellular Ca2+ wave was observed in vitro in a linear arrangement of smooth muscle cells. The intercellular wave was denominated ultrafast Ca2+ wave and it was suggested to be the result of the interplay between membrane potential and Ca2+ dynamics which depended on influx of extracellular Ca2+, cell membrane depolarization and its intercellular propagation. In the present study we measured experimentally the conduction velocity of the membrane depolarization and performed simulations of the ultrafast Ca2+ wave along coupled smooth muscle cells. Numerical results reproduced a wide spectrum of experimental observations, including Ca2+ wave velocity, electrotonic membrane depolarization along the network, effects of inhibitors and independence of the Ca2+ wave speed on the intracellular stores. The numerical data also provided new physiological insights suggesting ranges of crucial model parameters that may be altered experimentally and that could significantly affect wave kinetics allowing the modulation of the wave characteristics experimentally. Numerical and experimental results supported the hypothesis that the propagation of membrane depolarization acts as an intercellular messenger mediating intercellular ultrafast Ca2+ waves in smooth muscle cells.

Nature Publishing Group2016

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Actin-myosin filament bundles (stress fibers) are critical for tension generation and cell shape, but their mechanical properties are difficult to access. Here we propose a novel approach to probe individual peripheral stress fibers in living cells through a microsurgically generated opening in the cytoplasm. By applying large deformations with a soft cantilever we were able to fully characterize the mechanical response of the fibers and evaluate their tension, extensibility, elastic and viscous properties.

Nature Publishing Group2016

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How cells break symmetry and organize activity at their edges to move directionally is a fundamental question in cell biology. Physical models of cell motility commonly incorporate gradients of regulatory proteins and/or feedback from the motion itself to describe the polarization of this edge activity. These approaches, however, fail to explain cell behaviour before the onset of polarization. We use polarizing and moving fish epidermal cells as a model system to bridge the gap between cell behaviours before and after polarization. Our analysis suggests a novel and simple principle of self-organizing cell activity, in which local cell-edge dynamics depends on the distance from the cell centre, but not on the orientation with respect to the front-back axis. We validate this principle with a stochastic model that faithfully reproduces a range of cell-migration behaviours. Our findings indicate that spontaneous polarization, persistent motion and cell shape are emergent properties of the local cell-edge dynamics controlled by the distance from the cell centre.

Nature Publishing Group2016