Abstract
It is well recognized that isolated cardiac muscle cells beat in a periodic manner. Recently, evidence indicates that other, non-muscle cells, also perform periodic motions that are either imperceptible under conventional lab microscope lens or practically not easily amenable for analysis of oscillation amplitude, frequency, phase of movement and its direction. Here, we create a real-time video analysis tool to visually magnify and explore sub-micron rhythmic movements performed by biological cells and the induced movements in their surroundings. Using this tool, we suggest that fibroblast cells perform small fluctuating movements with a dominant frequency that is dependent on their surrounding substrate and its stiffness.
Highlights
Periodic movements of cells have been observed in different biological situations
We suggest that fibroblast cells on 2D glass substrate may perform slower periodic movements than cells embedded in a 3D gel environment
In order to stretch this soft gel under the microscope, we used a technique recently developed in our laboratory [63]
Summary
Isolated heart cells cyclically beat at a frequency of about 1 Hz, when cultured on Petri dishes or embedded in 3D hydrogels [1, 2]. It was suggested that non-cardiac cells may perform active rhythmic contractile and dynamic shape changes when cultured on 2D substrates or embedded in 3D matrices. Examples include fibroblasts [5,6,7,8,9], neutrophils [10, 11], mast cells [12, 13], epithelial cells [14], neural stem cells [15]; all were shown to perform various kinds of oscillatory motions in the range of 0.001–0.1 Hz. Interestingly, even unicellular organisms, such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Dictyostelium discoideum exhibit shape dynamics [16]. S. cerevisiae may show fluctuating nanometric movements (cell wall) in the range of 800–1600 Hz as measured by AFM [17], this movement is clearly not visible to current video microscopy
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