Fifteen-piconewton force detection from neural growth cones using nanowire arrays

Waldemar Hällström; Monica Lexholm; Dmitry B Suyatin; Greger Hammarin; Dan Hessman; Lars Samuelson; Lars Montelius; Martin Kanje; Christelle N Prinz

doi:10.1021/nl902675h

Fifteen-piconewton force detection from neural growth cones using nanowire arrays

Nano Lett. 2010 Mar 10;10(3):782-7. doi: 10.1021/nl902675h.

Authors

Waldemar Hällström¹, Monica Lexholm, Dmitry B Suyatin, Greger Hammarin, Dan Hessman, Lars Samuelson, Lars Montelius, Martin Kanje, Christelle N Prinz

Affiliation

¹ Division of Solid State Physics, Lund University, Sweden.

PMID: 20102185
DOI: 10.1021/nl902675h

Abstract

We used epitaxially grown monodisperse nanowire arrays to measure cellular forces with a spatial resolution of 1 mum. Nerve cells were cultured on the array and cellular forces were calculated from the displacement of the nanowire tips. The measurements were done in situ on live cells using confocal microscopy. Forces down to 15 pN were measured on neural growth cones, showing that this method can be used to study the fine details of growth-cone dynamics.

Publication types

Evaluation Study
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Cells, Cultured
Equipment Design
Equipment Failure Analysis
Growth Cones / physiology*
Growth Cones / ultrastructure*
Mice
Microarray Analysis / instrumentation*
Nanotechnology / instrumentation*
Nanotubes / chemistry*
Stress, Mechanical
Transducers*