UC Berkeley

Surface topography profoundly influences cell adhesion, differentiation, and stem cell fate control. Numerous studies using a variety of materials demonstrate that nanoscale topographies change the intracellular organization of actin cytoskeleton and therefore a broad range of cellular dynamics in live cells. However, the underlying molecular mechanism is not well understood, leaving why actin cytoskeleton responds to topographical features unexplained and therefore preventing researchers from predicting optimal topographic features for desired cell behavior. Here we demonstrate that topography-induced membrane curvature plays a crucial role in modulating intracellular actin organization. By inducing precisely controlled membrane curvatures using engineered vertical nanostructures as topographies, we find that actin fibers form at the sites of nanostructures in a curvature-dependent manner with an upper limit for the diameter of curvature at ∼400 nm. Nanotopography-induced actin fibers are branched actin nucleated by the Arp2/3 complex and are mediated by a curvature-sensing protein FBP17. Our study reveals that the formation of nanotopography-induced actin fibers drastically reduces the amount of stress fibers and mature focal adhesions to result in the reorganization of actin cytoskeleton in the entire cell. These findings establish the membrane curvature as a key linkage between surface topography and topography-induced cell signaling and behavior.