Combining AFM and acoustic probes to reveal changes in the elastic stiffness tensor of living cells.

ABSTRACT: Knowledge of how the elastic stiffness of a cell affects its communication with its environment is of fundamental importance for the understanding of tissue integrity in health and disease. For stiffness measurements, it has been customary to quote a single parameter quantity, e.g., Young's modulus, rather than the minimum of two terms of the stiffness tensor required by elasticity theory. In this study, we use two independent methods (acoustic microscopy and atomic force microscopy nanoindentation) to characterize the elastic properties of a cell and thus determine two independent elastic constants. This allows us to explore in detail how the mechanical properties of cells change in response to signaling pathways that are known to regulate the cell's cytoskeleton. In particular, we demons

SUBMITTER: Nijenhuis N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4190602 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature