Hydrodynamics in Cell Studies

Abstract

Hydrodynamic phenomena are ubiquitous in living organisms and can be used to manipulate cells or emulate physiological microenvironments experienced in vivo. Hydrodynamic effects influence multiple cellular properties and processes, including cell morphology, intracellular processes, cell–cell signaling cascades and reaction kinetics, and play an important role at the single-cell, multicellular, and organ level. Selected hydrodynamic effects can also be leveraged to control mechanical stresses, analyte transport, as well as local temperature within cellular microenvironments. With a better understanding of fluid mechanics at the micrometer-length scale and the advent of microfluidic technologies, a new generation of experimental tools that provide control over cellular microenvironments and emulate physiological conditions with exquisite accuracy is now emerging. Accordingly, we believe that it is timely to assess the concepts underlying hydrodynamic control of cellular microenvironments and their applications and provide some perspective on the future of such tools in in vitro cell-culture models. Generally, we describe the interplay between living cells, hydrodynamic stressors, and fluid flow-induced effects imposed on the cells. This interplay results in a broad range of chemical, biological, and physical phenomena in and around cells. More specifically, we describe and formulate the underlying physics of hydrodynamic phenomena affecting both adhered and suspended cells. Moreover, we provide an overview of representative studies that leverage hydrodynamic effects in the context of single-cell studies within microfluidic systems.

Automatic breast cancer cell classification using deep convolutional neural networks

“…Different concentration of cells between wells and channels produce gradients difference in flow resistance (Chung, J., 2011;Barata, D., 2017) producing cellular stress or disturbing cell viability and the ability of cell division. It is known that increased pressure can affect cell division and mechanical properties of the cell, as observed in some studies (Huber, D., 2018). In this work, differences in the distribution of cells were observed, that could be affecting the growth of BCC inside of the PDMS microdevice.…”

Universal motion of mirror-symmetric microparticles in confined Stokes flow

“…We carry out the same estimation for healthy and cancerous mammary cells from a mouse (figure 2 in ref. 4 ), where we make the common assumption that cells do not change shape due to flow ( 64 ). Throughout this discussion, we assume strong confinement for all objects, .…”

Scalable Parallel Manipulation of Single Cells Using Micronozzle Array Integrated with Bidirectional Electrokinetic Pumps

“…Therefore, electrokinetic forces on cells can be ignored. Suspended cells were not largely deformed during manipulation and experienced mainly Stokes' drag in a low Reynolds regime [49]. Since cell speeds were low, we thought strong mechanical stress due to Stokes' drag was not applied to cells during cell manipulation.…”