Extracting Cell Stiffness from Real-Time Deformability Cytometry: Theory and Experiment.

ABSTRACT: Cell stiffness is a sensitive indicator of physiological and pathological changes in cells, with many potential applications in biology and medicine. A new method, real-time deformability cytometry, probes cell stiffness at high throughput by exposing cells to a shear flow in a microfluidic channel, allowing for mechanical phenotyping based on single-cell deformability. However, observed deformations of cells in the channel not only are determined by cell stiffness, but also depend on cell size relative to channel size. Here, we disentangle mutual contributions of cell size and cell stiffness to cell deformation by a theoretical analysis in terms of hydrodynamics and linear elasticity theory. Performing real-time deformability cytometry experiments on both model spheres of known elasticity

SUBMITTER: Mietke A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4656812 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature