• BMB Reports
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.74-81
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• 2020

Under physiological and pathological conditions, mechanical forces generated from cells themselves or transmitted from extracellular matrix (ECM) through focal adhesions (FAs) and adherens junctions (AJs) are known to play a significant role in regulating various cell behaviors. Substantial progresses have been made in the field of mechanobiology towards novel methods to understand how cells are able to sense and adapt to these mechanical forces over the years. To address these issues, this review will discuss recent advancements of traction force microscopy (TFM), intracellular force microscopy (IFM), and monolayer stress microscopy (MSM) to measure multiple aspects of cellular forces exerted by cells at cell-ECM and cell-cell junctional intracellular interfaces. We will also highlight how these methods can elucidate the roles of mechanical forces at interfaces of cell-cell/cell-ECM in regulating various cellular functions.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.43-48
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• 2015

Collective cell migration is a fundamental phenomenon observed in various biological processes such as development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. During the collective migration, cells undergo changes in their phenotypes from those of stable to the migratory state via the process called epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Recent findings in biology and biochemistry have shown that EMT is closely related to the cancer invasion or metastasis, but not much of the correlations in kinematics and physical forces between the neighboring cells are known yet. In this study, we aim to understand the cell migration and stress distribution within the expanding cell cluster. We constructed the in vitro cell cluster on the hydrogel, employed traction force microscopy (TFM) and monolayer stress microscopy (MSM) to visualize the physical forces within the expanding cell monolayer. During the expansion, cells at the cluster edge exhibited enhanced motility and developed focal adhesions that are the essential features of EMT while cells at the core of the cluster maintained the epithelial characteristics. In the aspect of mechanical stress, the cluster edge had the highest traction force of ~90 Pa directed toward the cluster core, which means that cells at the edge actively pull the substrate to make the cluster expansion. The cluster core of the tightly confined cells by neighboring cells had a lower traction force value (~60 Pa) but the highest intercellular normal stress of ~800 Pa because of the accumulation of traction from the edge of the monolayer.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.18-22
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• 2014

Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is an undulatory nematode which exhibits two distinct locomotion types of swimming and crawling. Although in its natural habitat C. elegans lives in a non-Newtonian fluidic environment, our current understanding has been limited to the behavior of C. elegans in a simple Newtonian fluid. Here, we present some experimental results on the penetrating behavior of C. elegans at the interface from liquid to solid environment. Once C. elegans, which otherwise swims freely in a liquid, makes a contact to the solid gel boundary, it begins to penetrate vertically to the surface by changing its stroke motion characterized by a stiffer body shape and a slow stroke frequency. The particle image velocimetry (PIV) analysis reveals the flow streamlines produced by the stroke of worm. For the worm that crawls on a solid surface, we utilize a technique of traction force microscopy (TFM) to find that the crawling nematode forms localized force islands along the body where makes direct contacts to the gel surface.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.74-80
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• 2021

Cells regulate their shapes and motility by sensing the cues from the internal and external microenvironment. Under different circumstances, microglia, the brain resident immune cells, undergo dynamic phenotypic changes, one of which is a remarkable periodic oscillatory migration in vitro. However, very little is known about the kinematic and dynamic perspectives of this oscillatory behavior. In this study, we tracked the changes in cell morphology and nuclear displacement, and visualized the forces using traction force microscopy (TFM). By correlation analyses, we confirmed that the lamellipodia formation preceded the nuclear translocation. Moreover, traction, developed following lamellipodia formation, was found to be localized and fluctuated at two ends of the oscillating cells. Taken together, our results imply that oscillatory microglial cells feature a viscoelastic migration, which will contribute to the field of cell mechanics.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.70-77
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• 2022

Skeletal muscle tissues feature cellular heterogeneity, including differentiated myofibers, myoblasts, and satellite cells. Thanks to the presence of undifferentiated myoblasts and satellite cells, skeletal muscle tissues can self-regenerate after injury. In skeletal muscle regeneration, the collective motions among these cell types must play a significant role, but little is known about the dynamic collective behavior during the regeneration. In this study, we constructed in vitro platform to visualize the migration behavior of skeletal muscle cells in specific conditions that mimic the biochemical environment of injured skeletal muscles. We then visualized the spatiotemporal distribution of stresses arising from the differential collectiveness in the cellular clusters under different conditions. From these analyses, we identified that the heterogeneous population of muscle cells exhibited distinct collective migration patterns in the injury-mimicking condition, suggesting selective activation of a specific cell type by the biochemical cues from the injured skeletal muscles.

• Elastomers and Composites
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.201-208
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• 2013

In this study, effect of different amounts of sulfur and vulcanization accelerators in the acrylonitrile styrene-butadiene rubber (AN-SBR)/silica compounds on the properties of tire tread compound were studied. As a result, cure rate and degree of cross-linking of the compounds were increased due to enhanced cross-linking reactivity by the increased amounts of sulfur and vulcanization accelerators. Also, abrasion resistance and the mechanical properties such as hardness and modulus of the compounds were improved by enhanced degree of cross-linking of the compounds. For the dynamic properties, tan ${\delta}$ value at $0^{\circ}C$ was increased due to the increase of glass transition temperature ($T_g$) by enhanced degree of cross-linking of the compound, and tan ${\delta}$ value at $60^{\circ}C$ was decreased. Initial cure time ($t_1$) showed the linear relationship with tan ${\delta}$ value at $60^{\circ}C$. This result is attributed that reduced initial cure time ($t_1$) of compounds by applying increased amount of curatives can form cross-linking in early stage of vulcanization that may suppress development of filler network. This result is verified by observation on the surface of annealed compounds using AFM (atomic force microscopy). Consequently, decreased initial cure time is considered a very important parameter to reduce tan ${\delta}$ at $60^{\circ}C$ through reduced re-agglomeration of silica particles.