Journal article

On-chip surface acoustic wave and micropipette aspiration techniques to assess cell elastic properties.

Yanqi Wu, Tianhong Cheng, Qianyu Chen, Bryan Gao, Alastair G Stewart, Peter VS Lee

Biomicrofluidics | A I P Publishing LLC | Published : 2020

Abstract

The cytoskeletal mechanics and cell mechanical properties play an important role in cellular behaviors. In this study, in order to provide comprehensive insights into the relationship between different cytoskeletal components and cellular elastic moduli, we built a phase-modulated surface acoustic wave microfluidic device to measure cellular compressibility and a microfluidic micropipette-aspiration device to measure cellular Young's modulus. The microfluidic devices were validated based on experimental data and computational simulations. The contributions of structural cytoskeletal actin filament and microtubule to cellular compressibility and Young's modulus were examined in MCF-7 cells. T..

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council


Funding Acknowledgements

We thank Andi Han for helping build the computational models. This work was performed in part at the Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication (MCN) in the Victorian Node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF). This work was performed in part at the Biological Optical Microscopy Platform (BOMP), University of Melbourne. This study was funded in part by grants from the Australian Research Council (ARC) (Nos. LP160100635 and IC170100016).