Abstract
Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a widely used imaging technique in material sciences. After becoming a standard surface-imaging tool, AFM has been proven to be useful in addressing several biological issues such as the characterization of cell organelles, quantification of DNA-protein interactions, cell adhesion forces, and electromechanical properties of living cells. AFM technique has undergone many successful improvements since its invention, including fluidic force microscopy (FluidFM), which combines conventional AFM with microchanneled cantilevers for local liquid dispensing. This technology permitted to overcome challenges linked to single-cell analyses. Indeed, FluidFM allows isolation and injection of single cells, force-controlled patch clamping of beating cardiac cells, serial weighting of micro-objects, and single-cell extraction for molecular analyses. This work aims to review the recent studies of AFM implementation in molecular and cellular biology.
Highlights
Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a widely used tool in material science. It comes as an evolution of the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) [1], which is restricted to electrically conductive materials
This review aims is to give an overview of the recent studies using the AFM technology in the molecular and cellular biology fields and presents an update of fluidic force microscopy (FluidFM) technology usages in biological sciences
The extraction procedure induced a decrease of nuclear fluorescence compared to cytoplasm [11]. These results demonstrated the ability of FluidFM to selectively extract cell compartment contents without any cell damage
Summary
Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a widely used tool in material science It comes as an evolution of the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) [1], which is restricted to electrically conductive materials. In this sense, AFM allows obtaining atomic-resolved images of insulators [2]. Developed by Zambelli’s group (ETH Zurich, Switzerland), FluidFM is an atomic force microscope which combines a conventional AFM with microchanneled cantilevers for local liquid dispensing via a fluidic circuit [6]. Using this technology, several single-cell biology challenges were addressed. This review aims is to give an overview of the recent studies using the AFM technology in the molecular and cellular biology fields and presents an update of FluidFM technology usages in biological sciences
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