Toward mechanical manipulations of cell membranes and membrane proteins using an atomic force microscope: an invited...

Recent advances in the use of the atomic force microscope (AFM) for manipulating cell membranes and membrane proteins are reviewed. Early pioneering work on measurements of the magnitude of the force required to create indentations with defined depth on their surfaces and to separate interacting pairs of avidin-biotin, antigen-antibody, and complementary DNA pairs formed the basis of this field. The method has subsequently been applied to map the presence of cell surface receptors and polysaccharides on live cell membranes by force measurement, with promising results. Attempts to extract phospholipids and proteins from lipid bilayers and live cell surfaces have been reported, providing a new tool for the manipulation of cellular activities and biochemical analysis at the single-cell level. An increasing awareness of the effect of the pulling speed (nm/s or microm/s), or more accurately, the force loading rate (pN/s or nN/s) on the magnitude of the rupture force, has led researchers to construct energy diagrams of rupture events based on the parameters available from such studies. Information on such nature of the interplay of force and loading rate is vital for nanomanipulation of living cells and cell membranes. Some relevant work for membrane manipulation using other methods is also reviewed in relation to AFM-based methodology.