Department of Biomedical Engineering, Yonsei University, Wonju 26493, Korea.
Department of Biomedical Laboratory Science, Yonsei University, Wonju 26493, Korea.
Sensors (Basel). 2018 Oct 19;18(10):3543. doi: 10.3390/s18103543.
Characterization of cellular dielectrophoretic (DEP) behaviors, when cells are exposed to an alternating current (AC) electric field of varying frequency, is fundamentally important to many applications using dielectrophoresis. However, to date, that characterization has been performed with monotonically increasing or decreasing frequency, not with successive increases and decreases, even though cells might behave differently with those frequency modulations due to the nonlinear cellular electrodynamic responses reported in previous works. In this report, we present a method to trace the behaviors of numerous cells simultaneously at the single-cell level in a simple, robust manner using dielectrophoretic tweezers-based force spectroscopy. Using this method, the behaviors of more than 150 cells were traced in a single environment at the same time, while a modulated DEP force acted upon them, resulting in characterization of nonlinear DEP cellular behaviors and generation of different cross-over frequencies in living cells by modulating the DEP force. This study demonstrated that living cells can have non-linear di-polarized responses depending on the modulation direction of the applied frequency as well as providing a simple and reliable platform from which to measure a cellular cross-over frequency and characterize its nonlinear property.
当细胞暴露在频率变化的交流电场中时，对细胞介电泳（DEP）行为进行特征描述对于许多使用介电泳的应用至关重要。然而，迄今为止，这种特征描述都是通过单调增加或减少频率来进行的，而不是通过连续增加和减少频率来进行的，尽管由于之前的工作中报道的非线性细胞动力学响应，细胞可能会以不同的方式对这些频率调制做出反应。在本报告中，我们提出了一种方法，使用基于介电泳镊子的力谱学以简单、稳健的方式同时在单细胞水平上追踪大量细胞的行为。使用这种方法，在相同的环境中同时追踪了超过 150 个细胞的行为，同时对它们施加调制的 DEP 力，从而对非线性 DEP 细胞行为进行了特征描述，并通过调制 DEP 力在活细胞中产生不同的交叉频率。这项研究表明，活细胞可以根据施加频率的调制方向产生非线性双极化响应，同时为测量细胞交叉频率和表征其非线性特性提供了一个简单可靠的平台。
