Abstract
Cellular contractile forces are crucial to biological researches. Therefore, a number of cellular contractile force evaluation techniques have been proposed. In contrast to extensive researches on the effect of exogenous forces such as tensile stretch and fluid shear stress, there is less work on how endogenous contractile forces are generated within cells under various conditions. This situation may be partly attributable to the lack of experimental techniques for evaluating cellular contractile forces. One of the most popular techniques is traction force microscopy that employs fluorescent microbeads embedded within hydrogels on which cells are plated. Contractile forces of the cell are estimated from the displacement of the fluorescent beads and the physical properties of the hydrogel. This technique requires complicated image correlation analyses and sophisticated skills to perform the experiments. Hence it is not practical to use that technique in large-scale screening. We have developed an alternative that allows traction force visualization for individual cells with relatively easier approaches.
Published Version
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