Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, 5 King's College Road, Toronto, Ontario, CanadaM5S 3G8.
Lab Chip. 2010 Aug 21;10(16):2154-61. doi: 10.1039/c004706f. Epub 2010 Jun 14.
This paper presents a cellular force measurement technique that allows for mechanical characterization of mouse oocytes during microinjection (i.e., in situ) without requiring a separate characterization process. The technique employs an elastic cell holding device and a sub-pixel computer vision tracking algorithm to resolve cellular forces in real time with a nanonewton force measurement resolution (2 nN at 30 Hz). Mechanical properties (i.e., stiffness) of both healthy and defective mouse oocytes are characterized. The experimental results suggest that the in situ obtained force-deformation data are useful for distinguishing healthy mouse oocytes from those with aging-induced cellular defects, promising an approach for oocyte quality assessment during microinjection. Biomembrane and cytoskeleton structures of the healthy and defective oocytes are also investigated in an attempt to correlate the measured subtle mechanical difference to cellular structure changes.
本文提出了一种细胞力测量技术，可在微注射（即原位）期间对小鼠卵母细胞进行机械特性分析，而无需单独的特性分析过程。该技术采用弹性细胞夹持装置和亚像素计算机视觉跟踪算法，以 30 Hz 时 2 nN 的纳米牛顿力测量分辨率实时解析细胞力。对健康和有缺陷的小鼠卵母细胞的机械性能（即硬度）进行了表征。实验结果表明，原位获得的力-变形数据可用于区分健康的和因衰老导致细胞缺陷的小鼠卵母细胞，为微注射期间的卵母细胞质量评估提供了一种方法。还研究了健康和有缺陷的卵母细胞的生物膜和细胞骨架结构，试图将测量到的细微力学差异与细胞结构变化相关联。
