Journal
NANOSCALE
Volume 13, Issue 38, Pages 16339-16348Publisher
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/d1nr03894j
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion [PID2019-106801GB-I00]
- Comunidad de Madrid [S2018/NMT-4443]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The study utilized AFM to measure and analyze the nanomechanical properties of live cells, revealing limitations in traditional elastic and viscoelastic models to characterize the mechanical response of cells under micrometer-scale deformations.
AFM-based force-distance curves are commonly used to characterize the nanomechanical properties of live cells. The transformation of these curves into nanomechanical properties requires the development of contact mechanics models. Spatially-resolved force-distance curves involving 1 to 2 mu m deformations were obtained on HeLa and NIH 3T3 (fibroblast) cells. An elastic and two viscoelastic models were used to describe the experimental force-distance curves. The best agreement was obtained by applying a contact mechanics model that accounts for the geometry of the contact and the finite-thickness of the cell and assumes a single power-law dependence with time. Our findings show the shortcomings of elastic and semi-infinite viscoelastic models to characterize the mechanical response of a mammalian cell under micrometer-scale deformations. The parameters of the 3D power-law viscoelastic model, compressive modulus and fluidity exponent showed local variations within a single cell and across the two cell lines. The corresponding nanomechanical maps revealed structures that were not visible in the AFM topographic maps.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available