Achievement

Trainee Samantha Knoll in Prof. Saif’s group has developed a system for tracking small-scale cellular displacement fluctuations using fluorescent nanoparticles with sub-10nm precision. This system can be applied to a variety of substrates including polyacrylamide and PDMS, as well as variable-stiffness substrates. Nanoscale cellular displacement fluctuations show distinct behavior in different regions of a cell. This behavior supports existing hypotheses in literature that cells sense their mechanical microenvironment by first feeling it locally and subsequently responding through adhesion and focal adhesion dynamics. Our method for measuring local deformation with high spatio-temporal resolution allows quantitative investigation of local nanoscale fluctuations, which could provide a new paradigm for how cells mechanically sense and respond to their microenvironment.