Direct characterization of cytoskeletal reorganization during blood platelet spreading

Blood platelets are the key cellular players in blood clotting and thus of great biomedical importance. While spreading at the site of injury, they reorganize their cytoskeleton within minutes and assume a flat appearance. As platelets possess no nucleus, many standard methods for visualizing cytoskeletal components by means of fluorescence tags fail. Here we employ silicon-rhodamine actin and tubulin probes for imaging these important proteins in a time-resolved manner. We find two distinct timescales for platelet spread area development and for cytoskeletal reorganization, indicating that although cell spreading is most likely associated with actin polymerization at the cell edges, distinct, stress-fiber-like actin structures within the cell, which may be involved in the generation of contractile forces, form on their own timescale. Following microtubule dynamics allows us to distinguish the role of myosin, microtubules and actin during early spreading.