Structural Rearrangements in CHO Cells After Disruption of Individual Cytoskeletal Elements and Plasma Membrane

Shear flow deformability cytometry: A microfluidic method advancing towards clinical use - A review

BACKGROUND

Shear flow deformability cytometry is an emerging microfluidic technique that has undergone significant advances in the last few years and offers considerable potential for clinical diagnostics and disease monitoring. By simultaneously measuring mechanical and morphological parameters of single cells, it offers a comprehensive extension of traditional cell analysis, delivering unique insight into cell deformability, which is gaining recognition as a novel biomarker for health and disease. Due to its operating principle, the method is particularly suitable for the clinical analysis of blood samples.

RESULTS

This review focuses on the recent developments in shear flow deformability cytometry, which is a widely adopted variant of deformability cytometry. It has a strong potential for applications in clinical practice due to its robust and simple operation, demonstrated applications with whole blood samples, as well as its high throughput, which can reach approximately 1000 cells per second. We begin by discussing some basic factors that influence the mechanical properties of cells and give an overview of deformability cytometry and its operational principles for samples from blood, cultured cells and tissues. Next, we review recent clinically relevant applications in analysis of blood and cancer cells. Finally, we address key challenges to clinical adoption, such as regulatory approval, scalable manufacturing, and workflow integration, emphasizing the need for further validation studies to facilitate clinical implementation.

SIGNIFICANCE

This article uniquely emphasizes the clinical relevance of microfluidic shear flow deformability cytometry, by giving an overview of mechanical and morphological biomarkers studied in clinically significant samples. In addition, it addresses critical barriers to clinical translation. By identifying these obstacles, this article aims to demonstrate the potential of deformability cytometry to bridge the gap between the research and the routine medical practice.

Plasma membrane disruption (PMD) formation and repair in mechanosensitive tissues

Mammalian cells employ an array of biological mechanisms to detect and respond to mechanical loading in their environment. One such mechanism is the formation of plasma membrane disruptions (PMD), which foster a molecular flux across cell membranes that promotes tissue adaptation. Repair of PMD through an orchestrated activity of molecular machinery is critical for cell survival, and the rate of PMD repair can affect downstream cellular signaling. PMD have been observed to influence the mechanical behavior of skin, alveolar, and gut epithelial cells, aortic endothelial cells, corneal keratocytes and epithelial cells, cardiac and skeletal muscle myocytes, neurons, and most recently, bone cells including osteoblasts, periodontal ligament cells, and osteocytes. PMD are therefore positioned to affect the physiological behavior of a wide range of vertebrate organ systems including skeletal and cardiac muscle, skin, eyes, the gastrointestinal tract, the vasculature, the respiratory system, and the skeleton. The purpose of this review is to describe the processes of PMD formation and repair across these mechanosensitive tissues, with a particular emphasis on comparing and contrasting repair mechanisms and downstream signaling to better understand the role of PMD in skeletal mechanobiology. The implications of PMD-related mechanisms for disease and potential therapeutic applications are also explored.

Cortical stiffness of keratinocytes measured by lateral indentation with optical tweezers

Keratin intermediate filaments are the principal structural element of epithelial cells. Their importance in providing bulk cellular stiffness is well recognized, but their role in the mechanics of cell cortex is less understood. In this study, we therefore compared the cortical stiffness of three keratinocyte lines: primary wild type cells (NHEK2), immortalized wild type cells (NEB1) and immortalized mutant cells (KEB7). The cortical stiffness was measured by lateral indentation of cells with AOD-steered optical tweezers without employing any moving mechanical elements. The method was validated on fixed cells and Cytochalasin-D treated cells to ensure that the observed variations in stiffness within a single cell line were not a consequence of low measurement precision. The measurements of the cortical stiffness showed that primary wild type cells were significantly stiffer than immortalized wild type cells, which was also detected in previous studies of bulk elasticity. In addition, a small difference between the mutant and the wild type cells was detected, showing that mutation of keratin impacts also the cell cortex. Thus, our results indicate that the role of keratins in cortical stiffness is not negligible and call for further investigation of the mechanical interactions between keratins and elements of the cell cortex.

Keratin Dynamics and Spatial Distribution in Wild-Type and K14 R125P Mutant Cells-A Computational Model

Keratins are one of the most abundant proteins in epithelial cells. They form a cytoskeletal filament network whose structural organization seriously conditions its function. Dynamic keratin particles and aggregates are often observed at the periphery of mutant keratinocytes related to the hereditary skin disorder epidermolysis bullosa simplex, which is due to mutations in keratins 5 and 14. To account for their emergence in mutant cells, we extended an existing mathematical model of keratin turnover in wild-type cells and developed a novel 2D phase-field model to predict the keratin distribution inside the cell. This model includes the turnover between soluble, particulate and filamentous keratin forms. We assumed that the mutation causes a slowdown in the assembly of an intermediate keratin phase into filaments, and demonstrated that this change is enough to account for the loss of keratin filaments in the cell's interior and the emergence of keratin particles at its periphery. The developed mathematical model is also particularly tailored to model the spatial distribution of keratins as the cell changes its shape.

Super-resolution imaging for monitoring cytoskeleton dynamics

The cytoskeleton is a key cellular structure that is important in the control of cellular movement, structure, and sensing. To successfully image the individual cytoskeleton components, high resolution and super-resolution fluorescence imaging methods are needed. This review covers the three basic cytoskeletal elements and the relative benefits and drawbacks of fixed versus live cell imaging before moving on to recent studies using high resolution and super-resolution techniques. The techniques covered include the near-diffraction limited imaging methods of confocal microscopy and TIRF microscopy and the super-resolution fluorescence imaging methods of STORM, PALM, and STED.