Cell & Nucleus Deformation
Cell & Nucleus Deformation
The optical tweezers platform SENSOCELL™ brings you the possibility to study cell membrane and cell nucleus mechanotransduction patways by stretching cells as a whole or manipulating cell nuclei and directly measure the applied forces:
- Stretch cells as a whole by applying forces on their membrane via multiple optical traps.
- Stretch and/or squeeze cell nuclei to study nuclear mechanotransduction pathways.
- Stretching forces can be applied via trapped exogenous spherical particles or directly trapping endogenous trappable cellular structures like membranes or nuclei.
Would you like to try SENSOCELL™ with your biological system samples? Let’s do it, contact us!
Cell nucleus deformation.
New application note and videos coming soon! Meanwhile, you can check the following article from biorxiv.org where SENSOCELL™ was used to probe intracellular nucleus mechanics in cell extracts from zebrafish embryos:
The nucleus measures shape deformation for cellular proprioception and regulates adaptive morphodynamics.
Research carried out by the labs of Dr. Verena Ruprecht (Centre of Genomic Regulation, CRG), Dr. Stefan Wieser and Dr. Michael Krieg (Institute of Photonic Sciences, ICFO).
Cell stretching experiment.
Cell stretching application video
Summary:
In this example, we show a stretching experiment performed on a yeast cell. The experiment is done in three steps as shown in Fig. 1. No beads were used for trapping and stretching the cell. Optical trapping forces are applied over trappable cellular structures like the cell membrane and directly measured by the force sensor.
The following figure plots the obtained applied force vs. stretch ratio data, showing a s-shaped curve behavior typical of viscoelastic materials.
Fig. 2 Applied force vs stretch ratio for a yeast cell stretching experiment.
