Study On The Experimental Techniques For Cellular Mechanics: The Compressive Loading And Modified Substrate Stretch Systems

Cellular Mechanics is one of the bases of Cell Engineering and Tissue Engineering, and is an important field of Biomechanics. Cellular Mechanics relates to the research of mechanical properties about the deformation, elasticity, viscosity and surface tension of cells, and to cellular responses to mechanical forces. Because of the staggering complexity of the in vivo environment, studying cellular responses to mechanical stress and strain has relied heavily on the use of in vitro mechanical loading systems.A compressive loading system and a modified substrate stretch system were established in this paper for the research of Cellular Mechanics. The following results were attained,(1) The thesis analyzed the current literatures and summarized the up-to-date experimental methods on Cellular Mechanics. The methods on the compressive loading and substrate stretch experiments were especially reviewed.(2) A compressive loading system was established which can realize real-time observation on cellular mechanical morphology.(3) The compressive loading system was used to study effects on the morphology of osteoblasts and on their cytoskeleton under the compressive loads. The results show that the system can satisfy the requirements of cell culture, and can provide relatively wide range of stresses applicable to a variety of researches.(4) The substrate stretch system was modified considering its existed problems on cell culture, i.e. computer can only acquire the data under the culture membrane in the old system without the data on membrane deflection and strain. The modified system can supply quasi-physiological alternating tensile stress to cells, and the membrane deflection and pressure can be measured.(5) The modified substrate stretch system was used to culture myoblasts under the tensional environment. The results show that the modified system can satisfy the requirements of cell culture, and can provide substrate strains to cultured cells. And the dynamic pressure curves can be scaled so as to obtain the reference data needed for the three-dimensional finite element analysis of cell culture membrane.