Measuring Viscoelastic Properties of Living Cells

Precise measurement of mechanical properties of living cells is important in understanding their mechanics-biology relations. In this study, we adopted the atomic force microscope to measure the creep deformation and stress relaxation of six different human cell lines. We examined whether the measured creep and relaxation trajectories satisfy a verification relation derived based on the linear viscoelastic theory. We compared the traditional spring-dashpot and the newly developed power-law-type constitutive relations in fitting the experimental measurements. We found that the human normal liver (L02), hepatic cancer (HepG2), hepatic stellate (LX2) and gastric cancer (NCI-N87) cell lines are linear viscoelastic materials, and human normal gastric (GES-1) and gastric cancer (SGC7901) cell lines are nonlinear due to failing in satisfying the verification relation for linear viscoelastic theory. The three-parameter power-law-type constitutive relation can fit the experimental measurements better than that of the five-parameter classical spring-dashpot.

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  Acta Mechanica Solida Sinica

• Publication date

  2019-07-19

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Materials Science, Engineering

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1007/s10338-019-00113-7
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Power law creep and relaxation with the atomic force microscope: Determining viscoelastic property of living cells

  2019cited by this paper
• Viscoelastic properties of normal and cancerous human breast cells are affected differently by contact to adjacent cells.

  2017cited by this paper
• Coupled elasticity–diffusion model for the effects of cytoskeleton deformation on cellular uptake of cylindrical nanoparticles

  2015cited by this paper
• Role of Capsular Polysaccharides in Biofilm Formation: An AFM Nanomechanics Study.

  2015cited by this paper
• Mechanical properties of fibroblasts depend on level of cancer transformation.

  2014cited by this paper
• Creep effect on cellular uptake of viral particles

  2014cited by this paper
• Substrate stiffness regulates cellular uptake of nanoparticles.

  2013cited by this paper
• Quantifying cell-to-cell variation in power-law rheology.

  2013cited by this paper
• Cancer cell recognition--mechanical phenotype.

  2012cited by this paper
• Creep and Relaxation of Nonlinear Viscoelastic Materials: With an Introduction to Linear Viscoelasticity

  2012cited by this paper
• Comparison of mechanical properties of normal and malignant thyroid cells.

  2012cited by this paper
• Cancer cell detection in tissue sections using AFM.

  2012cited by this paper
• AFM stiffness nanotomography of normal, metaplastic and dysplastic human esophageal cells

  2011cited by this paper
• Linear and Nonlinear Rheology of Living Cells

  2011cited by this paper
• Microelasticity of red blood cells in sickle cell disease

  2011cited by this paper
• Stress relaxation and creep on living cells with the atomic force microscope: a means to calculate elastic moduli and viscosities of cell components

  2010cited by this paper
• Geometry independence of the normalized relaxation functions of viscoelastic materials in indentation

  2010cited by this paper
• Mesenchymal stem cell mechanics from the attached to the suspended state.

  2010cited by this paper
• Stress relaxation microscopy: imaging local stress in cells.

  2010cited by this paper
• The regulatory role of cell mechanics for migration of differentiating myeloid cells

  2009cited by this paper
• AFM indentation study of breast cancer cells.

  2008cited by this paper
• Lifetime and strength of adhesive molecular bond clusters between elastic media.

  2008cited by this paper
• Biomechanics approaches to studying human diseases.

  2007cited by this paper
• Distinct membrane mechanical properties of human mesenchymal stem cells determined using laser optical tweezers.

  2006cited by this paper
• Viscoelastic retraction of single living stress fibers and its impact on cell shape, cytoskeletal organization, and extracellular matrix mechanics.

  2006cited by this paper
• Single Cell Mechanics Study of the Human Disease Malaria

  2006cited by this paper
• Spherical indentation creep following ramp loading

  2005cited by this paper
• Creep function of a single living cell.

  2005cited by this paper
• Emergent patterns of growth controlled by multicellular form and mechanics.

  2005cited by this paper
• Time scale and other invariants of integrative mechanical behavior in living cells.

  2003cited by this paper
• The effect of chitosan on stiffness and glycolytic activity of human bladder cells.

  2001cited by this paper
• Measurement of cell microrheology by magnetic twisting cytometry with frequency domain demodulation.

  2001cited by this paper
• Two-point microrheology of inhomogeneous soft materials.

  2000cited by this paper
• Mechanics of living cells measured by laser tracking microrheology.

  2000cited by this paper
• Contact mechanics

  1999cited by this paper
• Contact Mechanics: Normal contact of inelastic solids

  1985cited by this paper
• Theory of viscoelasticity. An introduction

  1984cited by this paper
• Chapter I – Viscoelastic Stress Strain Constitutive Relations

  1982cited by this paper
• The Contact Problem for Viscoelastic Bodies

  1960cited by this paper

• Highly Deformable Phototunable Viscoelastic Fluid Interface Modulates Cellular Adaptive Wetting Behavior

  2025cites this paper
• Advances and challenges in the mechanics of biological soft tissues: test methods, modeling, and applications

  2025cites this paper
• Electromechanical Setup for Measuring Viscoelastic Interactions of a Brain Phantom

  2025cites this paper
• A Fractional Order Standard Linear Solid Model for Extracting the Elastic Moduli of Internal Cell Structures.

  2025cites this paper
• An updated model including the deflection history of microcantilever for characterizing cellular viscoelastic properties by AFM indentation-relaxation test

  2024influential citation
• Comparative assessment of liver tissue: from microstructural and mesoscale vascular architecture to macroscopic mechanics

  2024cites this paper
• Nonlinear Microwave Susceptibility Measurements Using Intermodulation Products on a Microfluidic Platform

  2024cites this paper
• Experimental extraction of Young's modulus of gastric tissue with development of spherical, cylindrical, and crowned rollers contact theories

  2024cites this paper
• Viscoelastic response of gray matter and white matter brain tissues under creep and relaxation.

  2023cites this paper
• Changes in the mechanical properties of human mesenchymal stem cells during differentiation

  2023cites this paper
• Electromechanical interactions between cell membrane and nuclear envelope: Beyond the standard Schwan's model of biological cells.

  2023cites this paper
• Biomechanical Sensing Using Gas Bubbles Oscillations in Liquids and Adjacent Technologies: Theory and Practical Applications

  2022cites this paper
• Double-peak resonant mapping of cellular viscoelasticity in force-clamp detection of atomic force microscope

  2022cites this paper
• Pore‐scale simulation of mucilage drainage

  2022cites this paper
• Ultrasound elastography using shear wave interference patterns: a finite element study of affecting factors

  2021cites this paper
• A parameter reduced adaptive quasi-linear viscoelastic model for soft biological tissue in uniaxial tension.

  2021cites this paper
• Effects of Lipid Deposition on Viscoelastic Response in Human Hepatic Cell Line HepG2

  2021cites this paper
• AFM-based indentation method for measuring the relaxation property of living cells.

  2021cites this paper
• Nonlinear viscoelastic constitutive model for bovine liver tissue

  2020cites this paper
• A digital viscoelastic liver phantom for investigation of elastographic measurements

  2020cites this paper
• Large-deformation strain energy density function for vascular smooth muscle cells.

  2020cites this paper
• Mechanics of actin filaments in cancer onset and progress.

  2020cites this paper
• Preface to the “Soft Matter Mechanics” Special Issue of Acta Mechanica Solida Sinica

  2019cites this paper