A convenient technique is reported in this note for measuring elastic modulus of extremely soft material for cellular adhesion. Specimens of bending cylinder under gravity are used to avoid contact problem between testing device and sample, and a beam model is presented for evaluating the curvatures of gel beams with large elastic deformation. A self-adaptive algorithm is also proposed to search for the best estimation of gels＇ elastic moduli by comparing the experimental bending curvatures with those computed from the beam model with preestimated moduli. Application to the measurement of the property of polyacrylamide gels indi- cates that the material compliance varies with the concentrations of bis-acrylamide, and the gels become softer after being immersed in a culture medium for a period of time, no matter to what extent they are polymerized.
Xiaoling Peng Jianyong Huang Lei Qin Chunyang Xiong Jing Fang
Quantitative investigation on mechanical characteristics of cardiac myocytes has important physiological significance. Based on elastic substrate technique, this paper develops a set of algorithms for high-efficiency cellular traction recovery. By applying a gradient-based digital image correlation method to track randomly distributed fluorescence microbeads on the deformed substrate induced by single cardiac myocyte, high-resolution substrate displacement field can readily be obtained. By using a numerical algorithm based on the integral Boussinesq solution, cell-substrate tractions are reconstructed in a stable and reliable manner. Finally, spatiotemporal dynamics of a single cardiac myocyte is investigated as it adheres to a polyacrylamide elastic substrate.
