Abstract
SummaryMonocytes continuously adapt their shapes for proper circulation and elicitation of effective immune responses. Although these functions depend on the cell mechanical properties, the mechanical behavior of monocytes is still poorly understood and accurate physiologically relevant data on basic mechanical properties are lacking almost entirely. By combining several complementary single-cell force spectroscopy techniques, we report that the mechanical properties of human monocyte are strain-rate dependent, and that chemokines can induce alterations in viscoelastic behavior. In addition, our findings indicate that human monocytes are heterogeneous mechanically and this heterogeneity is regulated by chemokine CCL2. The technology presented here can be readily used to reveal mechanical complexity of the blood cell population in disease conditions, where viscoelastic properties may serve as physical biomarkers for disease progression and response to therapy.
Highlights
Accumulating evidence indicates that cell mechanical properties, such as stiffness and viscosity, are key indicators of cytoskeleton (Pegoraro et al, 2017; Walker et al, 2020) and nuclear organization (Miroshnikova et al, 2017; Stiekema et al, 2020) and may offer label-free intrinsic biophysical markers for determining physiological cell state transitions or pathological cell changes
These functions depend on the cell mechanical properties, the mechanical behavior of monocytes is still poorly understood and accurate physiologically relevant data on basic mechanical properties are lacking almost entirely
By combining several complementary single-cell force spectroscopy techniques, we report that the mechanical properties of human monocyte are strainrate dependent, and that chemokines can induce alterations in viscoelastic behavior
Summary
Accumulating evidence indicates that cell mechanical properties, such as stiffness and viscosity, are key indicators of cytoskeleton (Pegoraro et al, 2017; Walker et al, 2020) and nuclear organization (Miroshnikova et al, 2017; Stiekema et al, 2020) and may offer label-free intrinsic biophysical markers for determining physiological cell state transitions or pathological cell changes. Little information is available on the mechanical properties of immune cells, despite the fact that these continuously adapt their mechanics in order to function properly, e.g. in circulation, phagocytosis, migration, and cell–cell interactions (Huse, 2017). This lack of information is mainly due to the fact that the application of mechanical probes commonly employed elsewhere in cell biophysics are relatively new to immunologists, whereas biophysicists — on the other hand — have focused mostly on the mechanics of red blood cell (RBC), among various blood cell types, owing to this model’s simplicity. As such, probing the mechanical properties of these cells could provide fundamentally important insights into their function in health and disease, and could provide novel biomarker of immune activation and disease
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