Biophysical characterization of hematopoietic cells from normal and leukemic sources with distinct primitiveness

Probing the mechanobiological properties of human embryonic stem cells in cardiac differentiation by optical tweezers

“…Therefore, our findings suggest that similar changes in biomechanics occur during in vivo CM differentiation. Further, changes in the cell mechanics of hESC during cardiac differentiation in the current work are consistent with recently reported results such as those of fibroblasts and dedifferentiated cancer cells (Martin et al, 2006), primitive hematopoietic cells (Tan et al, 2011), mESC and their differentiated counterparts (Chowdhury et al, 2010), MSC, and MSC-derived chondrocytes and osteoblasts (Yourek et al, 2007). Cell mechanics plays an important role in the regulation of various cellular functions (McCain and Parker, 2011).…”

Influence of semiflexible structural features of actin cytoskeleton on cell stiffness based on actin microstructural modeling

“…UCB CD34 þ CD38 À cells and AML BM CD33 þ CD34 þ cells exhibit more primitive features, containing hematopoietic stem cells and their progenitors, and primitive leukemia initiating cells, respectively, in contrast to the less primitive UCB CD34 þ CD38 þ and AML BM CD33 þ CD34 À cells (Bonnet and Dick, 1997). The experimental results, reported in our previous study (Tan et al, 2011), were compared with the modeling results (Fig. 5).…”

“…Hematopoietic cells with distinct primitiveness from normal and leukemic sources showed different deformations, as reported in Section 3. In our previous study (Tan et al, 2011), the cell membrane model was used, which paid more attention to the elastic moduli of cells rather than the underlying microscopic semiflexible polymer physics of the actin cytoskeleton. Compared with the cell membrane model, the proposed semiflexible actin cytoskeleton model in this paper can better illustrate how the structural properties of the actin cytoskeleton affect cell deformation and stiffness.…”

“…Before the stretching experiment, streptavidin-coated polystyrene microbeads (Bangs Lab., Fishers, IN) were attached to the cells by coating with biotinylated concanavalin A (ConA; Sigma). More details have been presented in Tan et al (2011).…”

Artificially induced cell fusion by optical tweezers manipulation

“…In the fusion of two HDFns, only 7 out of 50 pairs were fused by laser cutting, which is an efficiency of 14%. The efficiency of hESC fusion was higher than that of HDFn fusion probably because the membrane deformability of the stem cells was higher than that of the differentiated cells when manipulated by optical tweezers [19][20][21]. …”