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Probing the biophysical properties of tumor cells during mitosis by atomic force microscopy

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Abstract

Mitosis is an important physiological event accompanying with dramatic changes of cellar biophysical properties. Failure of mitosis results in cell death or chromosome aneuploidy. In this study, we used atomic force microscopy to probe and compare the biophysical properties of tumor cells at different stages during mitosis. The rounding forces of MCF-7 cells oscillated during mitosis. At anaphase, the average elasticity of cells was higher than that at other phases. Cholesterol depletion with M\(\upbeta \)CD led to an increase in the average elasticity, whereas the average roughness of membrane surface decreased at the absence of cholesterol. Our study indicated that the distribution of actin filaments could affect the biophysical properties of tumor cells and cellular morphology during mitosis. Furthermore, the biophysical properties of tumor cells were also regulated by membrane cholesterol during mitosis. This work provides a new detection approach for monitoring tumor cell development at single cell level.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the National Key Basic Research Program of China (No. 2015CB352006), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61335011), the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (IRT_15R10) and the scientific research innovation team construction program of Fujian Normal University (IRTL1702).

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  1. Ningcheng Jiang and Minghai You have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of OptoElectronic Science and Technology for Medicine of Ministry of Education, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory for Photonics Technology, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, 350007, China

    Ningcheng Jiang, Minghai You, Yuhua Wang, Shusen Xie & Hongqin Yang

  2. Provincial University Key Laboratory of Cellular Stress Response and Metabolic Regulation, College of Life Sciences, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, 350117, China

    Yide Huang & Yao Lin

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  1. Ningcheng Jiang
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  2. Minghai You
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  3. Yuhua Wang
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  4. Yide Huang
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  5. Shusen Xie
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  6. Yao Lin
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  7. Hongqin Yang
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Correspondence to Hongqin Yang.

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Jiang, N., You, M., Wang, Y. et al. Probing the biophysical properties of tumor cells during mitosis by atomic force microscopy. Biomech Model Mechanobiol 17, 1209–1215 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10237-018-1012-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10237-018-1012-0

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