Dresden 2006 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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AKB: Biologische Physik
AKB 30: Poster Session I
AKB 30.11: Poster
Montag, 27. März 2006, 15:30–18:00, P1
Cell vitality probed by noise analysis of thickness shear mode resonators: a new means to measure vertical cell motility — •A. Sapper1, A. Janshoff1, and J. Wegener2 — 1Institute of Physical Chemistry, University of Mainz, 55128 Mainz, Germany — 2Institute for Biochemistry, University of Münster, 49151 Münster, Germany
A fundamental property of mammalian cells is their motility, which correlates with the metastatic behavior of cancer cells. Thus detection of cell motiliy is important for understanding the metastatic process and developing clinical measurements for diagnosis and treatment of cancer. We report a new approach to expose cell motility using the quartz crystal microbalance (QCM). The QCM is known as an excellent and sensitive tool to follow adsorption in liquid environment like the attachment and spreading of mammalian cells. The technique is based on a quartz resonator sandwiched between two metal electrodes that are used to excite mechanical shear displacements of the piezoelectric quartz disks electrically. Measuring cell motility is done by evaluating the noise of the cell-covered quartz crystal in the resonant frequency response produced by active formation and breakage of noncovalent bonds as well as volume changes that might be produced by periodic contraction of actin stress fibers. We show how the QCM could be used to monitor shape fluctuations of living cells with a prospective application as an assay for biological activity of cells as found in metastasis of tumor cells. The QCM provides a quantitative means to monitor mechanical vibration of cells with amplitudes in the nanometer regime at high time resolution and might be used to distinguish between malign and benign cells.