Thanks to iron micro-pillars embedded in a layer of elastic material, we are able to pull locally on a part of the cell. This device being included in a microscope, we can observe in live the evolution of different fluorescent markers when a living cell is stimulated. As a proof of principle of this new experimental system, we show that cells are ticklish: just after a mechanical stimulation, they became restless!
Une collaboration LIPhy-Néel-G2Elab
Magneto-active substrates for local mechanical stimulation of living cells, Cécile Bidan, Mario Fratzl, Alexis Coullomb, Philippe Moreau, Alain Lombard, Irène Wang, Martial Balland, Thomas Boudou, Nora Dempsey, Thibaut Devillers and Aurélie Dupont, Scientific Reports 8, 1464 (2018)