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Review of Scientific Instruments / Volume 83 / Issue 9 / ARTICLES / Biology and Medicine

Rev. Sci. Instrum. 83, 094302 (2012); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4751869 (7 pages)

Micro glass ball embedded gels to study cell mechanobiological responses to substrate curvatures

Sang Joo Lee and Shengyuan Yang

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology, 150 West University Boulevard, Melbourne, Florida 32901, USA

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(Received 5 April 2012; accepted 27 August 2012; published online 21 September 2012)

The effects of substrate stiffness on cell behaviors have been extensively studied; however, the effects of substrate curvature are not well documented. The curvature of the surface to which cells adhere can have profound effects on cell behaviors. To reveal these cell mechanobiological responses to substrate curvatures, here we introduce a novel, unique, simple, and flexible class of substrates, polyacrylamide gels embedded with micro glass balls ranging in diameter from 5 μm to 2 mm, to culture cells. NIH-3T3 fibroblasts were cultured on these glass ball embedded gels. Morphologies of cells growing on glass balls were analyzed by using an optical microscope and a 3D confocal laser scanning microscope. The cell behaviors on micro cylindrical glass tubes having similar diameters to the glass balls were also compared. It is observed that the fibroblasts were sensitive to the curvatures of the glass balls. Significant differences in cell attachment rate, migration speed, and morphology were noted for cells cultured on glass balls of diameters at or below 500 μm, compared to those on glass balls of larger diameters. Cell spread area increased as a function of the ball diameter with three different slopes in the three distinct regions depending on the ball diameter. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first experimental attempt to study cell responses to spherically shaped substrates. These cell culture experiments imply that this class of substrates, micro glass ball embedded gels, can be useful tools to study cell mechanobiological responses to substrate curvatures, related cell and tissue engineering researches, and biomedical applications.

© 2012 American Institute of Physics

Article Outline

  1. INTRODUCTION
  2. MATERIALS AND METHODS
    1. Substrate preparation
    2. Cell culture
    3. Cell staining and confocal microscopy
  3. EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS
    1. Glass ball embedded PA gel platform
    2. Effects of substrate curvature on fibroblast morphology
    3. Confocal laser scanning microscopy
    4. Cell spreading behaviors due to the effect of local substrate stiffness
    5. Cell migration on both spherical and cylindrical surfaces
  4. DISCUSSION

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KEYWORDS, PACS, and IPC

Keywords

biomechanics, cellular biophysics, optical microscopy, polymer gels, tissue engineering

PACS

  • 87.16.-b

    Subcellular structure and processes

  • 87.17.Rt

    Cell adhesion and cell mechanics

International Patent Classification (IPC)

  • C12M3/00

    Tissue, human, animal or plant cell, or virus culture apparatus

  • G01B9/04

    Measuring microscopes

ARTICLE DATA

Digital Object Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4751869

PUBLICATION DATA

ISSN

0034-6748 (print)  
1089-7623 (online)

Publisher

$abstract.society.value is a Member of CrossRef American Institute of Physics

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