Probing The Biophysical Properties Of Tumor Cells During Mitosis By Atomic Force Microscopy

Cell cycle is one of the main characteristics for cell life activity and mitosis is an important stage in eukaryotic cell cycle.Mitosis failure will lead to the incidence of cancer or other diseases.So it is of great importance to explore the physical mechanisms of mitosis.In this paper,Atomic Force Microscopy(AFM)was used to quantitatively study the biophysical properties of MCF-7 and HeLa malignant tumor cells at different stages of mitosis.Firstly,a method to monitor the biomechanical properties of mitotic process was developed based on AFM force spectroscopy mode,and the induced pressure of MCF-7 cells during mitosis was measured.Secondly,the biophysical properties of MCF-7 and HeLa cancer cells were quantitatively measured by AFM,and the differences between each mitotic stage were obtained.Finally,the effect of cholesterol depletion on the biophysical properties of mitotic cells by MβCD was investigated.The results show that the changes of biophysical properties for MCF-7 and HeLa cells are related to the recombination of cellular microfilament cytoskeleton.Cholesterol,which is an important component of membrane lipid,has a significant effect on the biophysical properties of cells in mitosis.Our findings would give insight into the biomechanical mechanisms of mitosis at the single-cell level,and provide a new method to further understand the molecular mechanisms of micro-nano biomechanical changes in tumor cells mitosis.