A comparison of methods to assess cell mechanical properties

Pei-Hsun Wu; Dikla Raz-Ben Aroush; Atef Asnacios; Wei-Chiang Chen; Maxim E Dokukin; Bryant L Doss; Pauline Durand-Smet; Andrew Ekpenyong; Jochen Guck; Nataliia V Guz; Paul A Janmey; Jerry S H Lee; Nicole M Moore; Albrecht Ott; Yeh-Chuin Poh; Robert Ros; Mathias Sander; Igor Sokolov; Jack R Staunton; Ning Wang; Graeme Whyte; Denis Wirtz

doi:10.1038/s41592-018-0015-1

A comparison of methods to assess cell mechanical properties

Nat Methods. 2018 Jul;15(7):491-498. doi: 10.1038/s41592-018-0015-1. Epub 2018 Jun 18.

Authors

Pei-Hsun Wu¹, Dikla Raz-Ben Aroush², Atef Asnacios³, Wei-Chiang Chen⁴, Maxim E Dokukin⁵, Bryant L Doss⁶, Pauline Durand-Smet⁷, Andrew Ekpenyong⁸, Jochen Guck⁹, Nataliia V Guz¹⁰, Paul A Janmey¹¹, Jerry S H Lee^{4

12}, Nicole M Moore¹³, Albrecht Ott¹⁴, Yeh-Chuin Poh¹³, Robert Ros¹⁵, Mathias Sander¹⁶, Igor Sokolov¹⁷, Jack R Staunton⁶, Ning Wang¹⁸, Graeme Whyte⁸, Denis Wirtz¹⁹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Departments of Pathology and Oncology, The Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA. pwu@jhu.edu.
² Institute for Medicine and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
³ Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes, Unité Mixte de Recherche 7057, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and Université Paris-Diderot (Paris 7), Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris, France. atef.asnacios@univ-paris-diderot.fr.
⁴ Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Departments of Pathology and Oncology, The Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA.
⁵ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA.
⁶ Department of Physics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.
⁷ Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes, Unité Mixte de Recherche 7057, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and Université Paris-Diderot (Paris 7), Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris, France.
⁸ Biotechnology Center, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
⁹ Biotechnology Center, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany. jochen.guck@biotec.tu-dresden.de.
¹⁰ Department of Physics, Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY, USA.
¹¹ Institute for Medicine and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA. janmey@mail.med.upenn.edu.
¹² Center for Strategic Scientific Initiatives, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD, USA.
¹³ Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA.
¹⁴ Biological Experimental Physics Department, Saarland University, Saarbruecken, Germany. albrecht.ott@physik.uni-saarland.de.
¹⁵ Department of Physics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA. Robert.Ros@asu.edu.
¹⁶ Biological Experimental Physics Department, Saarland University, Saarbruecken, Germany.
¹⁷ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA. Igor.Sokolov@tufts.edu.
¹⁸ Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA. nwangrw@illinois.edu.
¹⁹ Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Departments of Pathology and Oncology, The Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA. wirtz@jhu.edu.

Abstract

The mechanical properties of cells influence their cellular and subcellular functions, including cell adhesion, migration, polarization, and differentiation, as well as organelle organization and trafficking inside the cytoplasm. Yet reported values of cell stiffness and viscosity vary substantially, which suggests differences in how the results of different methods are obtained or analyzed by different groups. To address this issue and illustrate the complementarity of certain approaches, here we present, analyze, and critically compare measurements obtained by means of some of the most widely used methods for cell mechanics: atomic force microscopy, magnetic twisting cytometry, particle-tracking microrheology, parallel-plate rheometry, cell monolayer rheology, and optical stretching. These measurements highlight how elastic and viscous moduli of MCF-7 breast cancer cells can vary 1,000-fold and 100-fold, respectively. We discuss the sources of these variations, including the level of applied mechanical stress, the rate of deformation, the geometry of the probe, the location probed in the cell, and the extracellular microenvironment.

Publication types

Comparative Study
Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

Biomechanical Phenomena
Cell Adhesion
Cell Movement
Humans
Lab-On-A-Chip Devices
MCF-7 Cells
Single-Cell Analysis / methods*
Stress, Mechanical

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

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