Intracellular viscoelasticity of HeLa cells during cell division studied by video particle-tracking microrheology

Cell division plays an important role in regulating cell proliferation and differentiation. It is managed by a complex sequence of cytoskeleton alteration that induces dividing cells to change their morphology to facilitate their division. The change in cytoskeleton structure is expected to affect the intracellular viscoelasticity, which may also contribute to cellular dynamic deformation during cell division. However, the intracellular viscoelasticity during cell division is not yet well understood. In this study, we injected 100-nm (diameter) carboxylated polystyrene beads into the cytoplasm of HeLa cells and applied video particle tracking microrheology to measure their intracellular viscoelasticity at different phases during cell division. The Brownian motion of the intracellular nanoprobes was analyzed to compute the viscoelasticity of HeLa cells in terms of the elastic modulus and viscous modulus as a function of frequency. Our experimental results indicate that during the course of cell division, both intracellular elasticity and viscosity increase in the transition from the metaphase to the anaphase, plausibly due to the remodeling of cytoskeleton and redistributions of molecular motors, but remain approximately the same from the anaphase to the telophase.