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Atomic force microscopy detects differences in the surface brush of normal and cancerous cells

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Abstract

The atomic force microscope is broadly used to study the morphology of cells1,2,3,4,5, but it can also probe the mechanics of cells. It is now known that cancerous cells may have different mechanical properties to those of normal cells6,7,8, but the reasons for these differences are poorly understood9. Here, we report quantitatively the differences between normal and cancerous human cervical epithelial cells by considering the brush layer on the cell surface. These brush layers, which consist mainly of microvilli, microridges and cilia, are important for interactions with the environment. Deformation force curves obtained from cells in vitro were processed according to the ‘brush on soft cell model’10. We found that normal cells have brushes of one length, whereas cancerous cells have mostly two brush lengths of significantly different densities. The observed differences suggest that brush layers should be taken into account when characterizing the cell surface by mechanical means.

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Figure 1: Raw force curves of normal and cancerous cells.
Figure 2: Processed raw force data from Fig. 1.
Figure 3: Representative force curves.
Figure 4: Brush parameters for cells derived from the force curves of Fig. 2.
Figure 5: Visualization of the brushes.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge funding for this work from grants by the National Science Foundation no. 0304143 (I.S.), National Cancer Institute no. 1R15CA126855-01 (C.D.W.), and operational funds of Nanoengineering and Biotechnology Laboratories Center (NABLAB). Tissue was obtained from the Cooperative Human Tissue Network. We are thankful to S. Minko, V. Privman and E. Katz for useful discussions.

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Author notes

  1. S. Iyer & V. Subba-Rao

    Present address: Present address: School of Biomedical, Biomolecular and Chemical Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Australia (S.I.); Department of Physics, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan 48202, USA (V.S.-R.),

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Clarkson University, Potsdam, 13699, New York, USA

    S. Iyer, R. M. Gaikwad, V. Subba-Rao & Igor Sokolov

  2. Department of Biology, Clarkson University, Potsdam, 13699, NewYork, USA

    C. D. Woodworth

  3. Nanoengineering and Biotechnology Laboratories Center (NABLAB), Clarkson University, New York, 13699, USA

    C. D. Woodworth & Igor Sokolov

Authors
  1. S. Iyer
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  2. R. M. Gaikwad
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  3. V. Subba-Rao
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  4. C. D. Woodworth
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  5. Igor Sokolov
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Contributions

I.S. conceived and designed the experiments. S.I., R.M.G., V.S.R. and I.S. performed AFM and confocal measurements. C.D.W. and I.S. performed EM measurements. R.M.G. performed the critical electrolyte study. R.M.G., V.S.R. and I.S. analysed the data. S.I., C.D.W. and I.S. co-wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Igor Sokolov.

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Iyer, S., Gaikwad, R., Subba-Rao, V. et al. Atomic force microscopy detects differences in the surface brush of normal and cancerous cells. Nature Nanotech 4, 389–393 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2009.77

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