Study on the Elastic Characteristics of Living Cells using Atomic Force Microscope Indentation Technique

In this work, imaging and study of elastic property of the living cell was performed. The motivation of this work was to seek the possibility of exploiting Young's modulus as a disease indicator using Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) and also to gain fundamental understanding of cell mechanics for applications in medical nanorobots of the future. L-929 fibroblast adherent cell was used as the sample. Imaging condition in cell culturing media environment was done in very low speed ($20{\mu}m/ s$) compared to that in the ambient environment. For measuring the Young's modulus of the living cell, AFM indentation method was used. From the force-distance curve obtained from the indentation experiment the Young's modulus could be derived using the Hertz model. The Young's modulus of living L-929 fibroblast cell was $1.29{\pm}0.2$ kPa.