Alignment of fibroblasts on grooved surfaces described by a simple geometric transformation

The response of chick heart fibroblasts to grooved substrata was studied using microfabricated grooves and new measures of shape and alignment derived from the moments of cell shapes. Cell shape and alignment were measured on 23 different sets of regular, parallel grooves, which ranged in width from 1.65 to 8.96 micron, and in repeat spacing from 3.0 to 32.0 micron. The grooves were of constant depth, 0.69 micron. Digitized video images were analysed to extract the zero-, first- and second-order moments of the cell shapes, from which were calculated three measures of cell shape, and three measures of cell alignment. Regression analyses of the measures against parameters of the substratum such as groove width, repeat spacing and the ridge width between grooves show that ridge width is the main parameter affecting cell alignment (alignment being inversely proportional to ridge width), although groove width has a small additional effect. All the differences in cell shape between the different grooves can be summarized to a very good approximation as simple geometrical stretch transformations of the shapes of cells on planar surfaces. Our principal measure of cell alignment, paraxial elongation, is a measure of the necessary transformation. This finding has the interesting biological implication that the shape and orientation adopted by cells, in response to the grooves, are not governed by independent cellular mechanisms.