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Experimental Verification of the Elastic Formula for the Aspirated Length of a Single Cell Considering the Size and Compressibility of Cell During Micropipette Aspiration

Annals of Biomedical Engineering volume 46, pages 1026–1037 (2018)Cite this article

Abstract

In this study, an aspiration system for elastic spheres was developed to verify the approximate elastic formula for the aspirated length of a single solid-like cell undergoing micropipette aspiration (MPA), which was obtained in our previous study by theoretical analysis and numerical simulation. Using this system, foam silicone rubber spheres with different diameters and mechanical properties were aspirated in a manner similar to the MPA of single cells. Comparisons between the approximate elastic formula and aspiration experiments of spheres indicated that the predictions of the formula agreed with the experimental results. Additionally, combined with the MPA data of rabbit chondrocytes, differences in terms of the elastic parameters derived from the half-space model, incompressible sphere model, and compressible sphere model were explored. The results demonstrated that the parameter ξ (ξ = R/a, where R is the radius of the cell and a is the inner radius of the micropipette) and Poisson’s ratio significantly influenced the determination of the elastic modulus and bulk modulus of the cell. This work developed for the first time an aspiration system of elastic spheres to study the elastic responses of the MPA of a single cell and provided new evidence supporting the use of the approximate elastic formula to determine cellular elastic parameters from the MPA data.

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Acknowledgments

Supports from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11572213, 11632013, 11702184 and 11472185), the Natural Science Foundation of Shanxi Province, China (Grant No. 2014021013), and the Youth Funds of Taiyuan University of Technology (No. 2013T079) are acknowledged.

Conflict of interest

None of the authors have any competing financial interests related to this paper.

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanics and Engineering Science, Taiyuan University of Technology, 79 West Yingze Street, Taiyuan, 030024, China

    YongSheng Li & Jing Chen

  2. Institute of Applied Mechanics and Biomedical Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology, 79 West Yingze Street, Taiyuan, 030024, China

    LiLi Wang, Yuan Guo & WeiYi Chen

  3. Department of Design, Manufacture, and Engineering Management, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, G1 1XQ, Scotland, UK

    JiLing Feng

Authors
  1. YongSheng Li
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  2. Jing Chen
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  4. Yuan Guo
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Correspondence to WeiYi Chen.

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Associate Editor Sean S. Kohles oversaw the review of this article.

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Li, Y., Chen, J., Wang, L. et al. Experimental Verification of the Elastic Formula for the Aspirated Length of a Single Cell Considering the Size and Compressibility of Cell During Micropipette Aspiration. Ann Biomed Eng 46, 1026–1037 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-018-2023-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-018-2023-9

Keywords

  • Cell mechanics
  • Micropipette aspiration
  • Cell model
  • Mechanical properties
  • Experimental verification