NQPI Seminar 10/29/2026 - Anna Mather and Debalina Chakraborty

The Nanoscale and Quantum Phenomena Institute (NQPI) Seminar Series is pleased to welcome Anna Mather with UCM and Debalina Chakraborty, PhD Candidate, Department of Physics & Astronomy, Ohio University, as our featured speakers on Thursday, October 29 at 4:10 p.m. All seminars take place in Walter 145 and are also accessible virtually via Teams. Title: Confinement-Induced Membrane Blebbing in Breast Cancer Cells: A Microfluidic Approach Abstract: Cellular deformation under geometric confinement is a form of response driven by mechanical properties of the cell when subjected to external boundary conditions. Membrane blebbing is a visible outcome of this mechanical response, as it occurs due to membrane-cortex detachment and cortical disruption and intracellular pressure. This study investigated how geometric confinement and cortical mechanics influenced bleb formation in five breast cancer cell lines. Cells were driven through rectangular microchannels of 10, 12, and 14 µm width, producing different degrees of lateral confinement. Blebbing frequencies across five cell lines were measured under untreated conditions and following non-muscle-myosin-II (NM2) inhibition with 50 \textmu M blebbistatin. Variation of cell sizes both within the same cell line and across different ones, the degree of confinement inside the same channel was different. A cell-specific confinement ratio was used for characterizing the realized geometric constraint rather than relying only on