Force Spectroscopy of Membrane Hardness of SH-SY5Y Neuroblastoma Cells Before and After Differentiation

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is utilized in many studies for measuring the structure and thephysical characteristics of soft and bio materials. In particular, the force spectroscopy function inthe AFM system allows us to explore the mechanical properties of bio cells. In this study, we probethe variation in the membrane hardness of human neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells (SH-cells) beforeand after differentiation by using force spectroscopy. The SH-cell, which is usually differentiatedby using a chemical treatment with retinoic acid (RA), is a neuronal cell line employed widely asan in-vitro model for neuroscience research. In force spectroscopy, the force-distance curves areobtained from both the original and the RA-treated cells while the AFM tip approaches and pusheson the cell membranes. The slope deduced from linear region in the force-distance curve is thespring constant and corresponds to the hardness of the cell membrane. The spring constant ofthe RA-treated cells (0.597 ± 0.010 nN/nm) was smaller than that of the original cells (0.794 ±0.010 nN/nm), reflecting a hardness decrease in the cells differentiated with the RA treatments.
The results clearly demonstrated that the differentiated cells are softer than the original cells. Thechange in the elasticity of the differentiated cells might be caused by morphological modificationduring differentiation process. We suggest that force spectroscopy can be employed as a novelmethod to determine the degree of differentiation of stem cells into various functional cells.

참고문헌 (Reference)

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