A mechanical model of biological cells in microinjection

Abstract

Microinjection is an effective technique to introduce foreign materials into a biological cell. Although great developments have been achieved, a full understanding of the mechanical response of biological cells to injection operation remains deficient. In this paper, a mechanical model based on membrane theory is proposed. This model utilizes the Mooney-Rivlin material to model the deformation of biomembrane. The relationship between the injection force and the deformation of biological cells is established through the quasi-static equilibrium equations, which are solved by the Runge-Kutta numerical method. To verify the mechanical model, experiments are performed on microinjection of zebrafish and medaka embryos. It is demonstrated that the modeling results agree well with the experimental data, which shows that the proposed model can be used to estimate the mechanical properties of cell biomembranes.