Covalently Immobilizing Interferon-γ Drives Filopodia Production through Specific Receptor–Ligand Interactions Independently of Canonical Downstream Signaling

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Immobilizing a signaling protein to guide cell behavior has been employed in a wide variety of studies. This approach draws inspiration from biology, where specific, affinity-based interactions between membrane receptors and immobilized proteins in the extracellular matrix guide many developmental and homeostatic processes. Synthetic immobilization approaches, however, do not necessarily recapitulate the in vivo signaling system and potentially lead to artificial receptor–ligand interactions. To investigate the effects of one example of engineered receptor–ligand interactions, we focus on the immobilization of interferon-γ (IFN-γ), which has been used to drive differentiation of neural stem cells (NSCs). To isolate the effect of ligand immobilization, we transfected Cos-7 cells with only interferon-γ receptor 1 (IFNγR1), not IFNγR2, so that the cells could bind IFN-γ but were incapable of canonical signal transduction. We then exposed the cells to surfaces containing covalently immobilized IFN-γ and studied membrane morphology, receptor–ligand dynamics, and receptor activation. We found that exposing cells to immobilized but not soluble IFN-γ drove the formation of filopodia in both NSCs and Cos-7, showing that covalently immobilizing IFN-γ is enough to affect cell behavior, independently of canonical downstream signaling. Overall, this work suggests that synthetic growth factor immobilization can influence cell morphology beyond enhancing canonical cell responses through the prolonged signaling duration or spatial patterning enabled by protein immobilization. This suggests that differentiation of NSCs could be driven by canonical and non-canonical pathways when IFN-γ is covalently immobilized. This finding has broad implications for bioengineering approaches to guide cell behavior, as one ligand has the potential to impact multiple pathways even when cells lack the canonical signal transduction machinery.