Cell spreading on quartz crystal microbalance elicits positive frequency shifts indicative of viscosity changes

Abstract

Cell attachment and spreading on solid surfaces was investigated with a home-made quartz crystal microbalance (QCM), which measures the frequency, the transient decay time constant and the maximal oscillation amplitude. Initial interactions of the adsorbing cells with the QCM mainly induced a decrease of the frequency, coincident with mass adsorption. After about 80 min, the frequency increased continuously and after several hours exceeded the initial frequency measured before cell adsorption. Phase contrast and fluorescence microscopy indicated that the cells were firmly attached to the quartz surface during the frequency increase. The measurements of the maximal oscillation amplitude and the transient decay time constant revealed changes of viscoelastic properties at the QCM surface. An important fraction of these changes was likely due to alterations of cytosolic viscosity, as suggested by treatments of the attached cells with agents affecting the actin and microtubule cytoskeleton. Our results show that viscosity variations of cells can affect the resonance frequency of QCM in the absence of apparent cell desorption. The simultaneous measurements of the maximal oscillation amplitude, the transient decay time constant and the resonance frequency allow an analysis of cell adsorption to solid substratum in real time and complement cell biological methods.

Fibrinogen adsorption and platelet adhesion to silica surfaces with stochastic nanotopography

“…During the last 30 min of the experiment the Df responses deviated from the viscoelastic behavior as the platelets exhibited a greater level of energy dissipation above the sensor surface. 42 The Df plot for platelets interacting with fibrinogen coated 21 nm silica surfaces was quite different compared to the Df plot for platelets interacting with planar silica [ Fig. Coupled with this was the development of the actin cytoskeleton as shown by the spread morphology of platelets adhered to this surface [ Fig.…”

Cell adhesion on Ti surface with controlled roughness

“…Redepenning et al (1993) observed similar behavior for a single layer of osteoblasts using the Kanazawa equation (Kanazawa and Gordon, 1985). If these results are compared with the adhesion kinetics for other cellular lines one concludes that, in this case, the kinetics is very slow, since during the testing time there was no observed increase in the frequency due to stiffening of the attached cells (Galli Marxer et al, 2003).…”

Dynamic Mechanical Response of Epithelial Cells to Epidermal Growth Factor

“…It has been used for determining the kinetics of cell attachment and spreading Nimeri et al, 1998) and for monitoring the long term growth of cells (Otto et al, 1999;Reipa et al, 2006). More recently, the QCM has been applied to characterization of cell viscoelasticity (Alessandrini et al, 2006;Galli Marxer et al, 2003;Li et al, 2008;Marx et al, 2005;Pax et al, 2005;Voinova et al, 2004). When the instrument used has the capability for monitoring the change in dissipation factor as well as frequency, the technique is termed QCM-D (QCM with dissipation monitoring).…”