Subcellular Imaging During Single Cell Mechanical Characterization

Abstract

We report a method for combining confocal microscopy with single-cell mechanical characterization. This method allows investigating the effect of subcellular deformation (e.g. membranes, cytoplasm, cytoskeleton and organelles as endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria, and nucleus) on cell mechanical properties (e.g. stiffness and viscosity). Such a method is essential to choose biologically relevant mechanical properties of malignant cells as diagnostic cancer biomarkers. Using MEMS tweezers, we captured live single cancer cells and performed subcellular imaging during compression assays for mechanical measurements to obtain the deformation-dependent cell properties.