Isolation, spreading, locomotion on various substrata, and the effect of hypotonicity on locomotion of fish keratinocytes.

The paper describes improved methods for the isolation of fish skin keratinocytes, which spread and locomote 15 min after trypsinization, in the absence of extracellular matrix proteins. The random locomotion of these keratinocytes under isotropic conditions on glass, plastic (polystyrene), and glass covered with poly-L-lysine or collagen IV was studied with computer-aided methods. Several methods for quantitative description of random cell locomotion were compared. The values of some parameters commonly computed showed non-Gaussian distribution. A comparison of keratinocyte locomotion under isotonic and hypotonic conditions revealed that the hypotonic conditions increased cell displacement (net migration) owing to the klinokinetic and not the orthokinetic effect.