Abstract
The plant cell mechanics, including turgor pressure and wall mechanical properties, not only determine the growth of plant cells, but also reflect the functional and structural changes of plant cells under biotic and abiotic stresses. However, there are currently no appropriate techniques allowing to monitor the complex mechanical properties of living plant cells non-invasively and continuously. In this work, quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation (QCM-D) monitoring technique with overtones (3–9) was used for the dynamic monitoring of adhesions of living tobacco BY-2 cells onto positively charged N,N-dimethyl-N-propenyl-2-propen-1-aminiumchloride homopolymer (PDADMAC)/SiO2 QCM crystals under different concentrations of mannitol (CM) and the subsequent effects of osmotic stresses. The cell viscoelastic index (CVIn) (CVIn = ΔD⋅n/ΔF) was used to characterize the viscoelastic properties of BY-2 cells under different osmotic conditions. Our results indicated that lower overtones of QCM could detect both the cell wall and cytoskeleton structures allowing the detection of plasmolysis phenomena; whereas higher overtones could only detect the cell wall’s mechanical properties. The QCM results were further discussed with the morphological changes of the BY-2 cells by an optical microscopy. The dynamic changes of cell’s generated forces or cellular structures of plant cells caused by external stimuli (or stresses) can be traced by non-destructive and dynamic monitoring of cells’ viscoelasticity, which provides a new way for the characterization and study of plant cells. QCM-D could map viscoelastic properties of different cellular structures in living cells and could be used as a new tool to test the mechanical properties of plant cells.
Highlights
College of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha 410128, China; Hunan Provincial Engineering Technology Research Center for Cell Mechanics and Function Analysis, Abstract: The plant cell mechanics, including turgor pressure and wall mechanical properties, determine the growth of plant cells, and reflect the functional and structural changes of plant cells under biotic and abiotic stresses
In order to accurately show the changes of frequency and dissipation induced by the adhesions of BY-2 cells and osmotic stresses, we used ∆Dr and ∆Fr to represent the changes in cells relative to that of the reference crystal in mannitol, and
Most of the BY-2 cells are in the initial state of plasmolysis, at this time, the cell membrane exerts no pressure on the cell wall, so the force on the chip is mainly due to the cell wall adhesion (Figure 7a)
Summary
College of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha 410128, China; Hunan Provincial Engineering Technology Research Center for Cell Mechanics and Function Analysis, Abstract: The plant cell mechanics, including turgor pressure and wall mechanical properties, determine the growth of plant cells, and reflect the functional and structural changes of plant cells under biotic and abiotic stresses. The dynamic changes of cell’s generated forces or cellular structures of plant cells caused by external stimuli (or stresses) can be traced by non-destructive and dynamic monitoring of cells’ viscoelasticity, which provides a new way for the characterization and study of plant cells. 1. Introduction with regard to jurisdictional claims in Changes in the extracellular microenvironment will cause changes in plant cell structure and physiological function, which will inevitably lead to changes in the mechanical properties within and between cells. Introduction with regard to jurisdictional claims in Changes in the extracellular microenvironment will cause changes in plant cell structure and physiological function, which will inevitably lead to changes in the mechanical properties within and between cells These mechanical interactions have very important physiological and pathological significance. It is even more difficult to observe the structural changes of plant cytoskeleton, fluorescent labelling of actin and/or microtube has to be made, it may suffer from photobleaching and fluorescent dye losses over long measurement periods, leading to ambiguous results [10]
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