The group of Tam Mignot, with which O. Theodoly has been collaborating for 10 years, is pursuing his leading research activity on the mechanisms of micro-organisms motility. A novel paper in the journal Nature with association of LAI for technical support on microscopy experiments has just been published: “The mechanism of force transmission at bacterial focal adhesion complexes”, Volume: 539, Issue: 7630, Pages: 530, DOI: 10.1038/nature20121, Published: NOV 24 2016.
LAI participated in a special teaching week dedicated to the introduction of physics and biophysics concepts to the PhD students of Labex INFORM. Microfluidics, cell migration, cell mechanics, image processing and data processing were some of the topics of these courses. We kept on the tracks of Dec. 2015 and Dec. 2014 sessions and got a very good feedback from biology students!
We published the first paper obtained with our in-house designed and built laminar flow chamber automation. This innovative machine allows fast single molecular force studies, for both kinetics and thermodynamic studies. Please see: A Rough Energy Landscape to Describe Surface-Linked Antibody and Antigen Bond Formation. Sci Rep. 2016 Oct 12;6:35193.
Congratulations to Dr Alexander Hornung who got his PhD in Biophysics from the doctoral school of Physics. His thesis was under the supervision of Marie-Pierre Valignat and is entitled “Two-dimensional migration of human effector T-cells: Integrin-dependent motility studies under shear stress”.
Pierre Bongrand becomes officially Emeritus professor of AMU and Olivier Theodoly becomes the director of LAI. The goal is to pursue the original activity of the LAI on quantitative biophysics and transfer to medicine, and to foster further the scientific dynamics within the unit.
Laurene Aoun, Xuan Luo and Olivier Theodoly sailed off from Marseille to participate to the CNRS summer School on active matter. They crossed whales on the way but unlike Jonas, they didn’t need their help to safely reach the harbour 3 days later. Nice conference to the LAI sailors.
The LAI will be happy to benefit from the great experience of its historical founder for the next quinquennial. Congratulations, Pierre.
Jeremie Kerbrat is here for 2 months, with Pierre-Henri and Laurent Limozin.
The long term effort to develop microfluidic tools to probe the rheological properties of circulating leukocytes has allowed getting new insight in the triggering mechanisms of the acute respiratory distress syndrome. This work, performed in a collaboration with Dr Forel and Pr Papazian from AP-HM has been published in Critical Care: “The leukocyte-stiffening property of plasma in early acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) revealed by a microfluidic single-cell study: the role of cytokines and protection with antibodies”
Critical Care (2016) 20:8 DOI 10.1186/s13054-015-1157-5
Marie-Julie DEJARDIN is doing her Master 2 internship for 6 months, in the frame of the Nice University Imaging Program. She is financially supported by GDR MIV and will work on imaging APC lamellipods with combined AFM and interferometry under the direction of Pierre-Henri Puech and Laurent Limozin.
Adhesion & Inflammation Lab 
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