Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 13, 2025
Single Cell Durotaxis Assay for Assessing Mechanical Control of Cellular Movement and Related Signaling Events
Published on: August 27, 2019
Spatiotemporal single-cell tracking analysis in 3D tissues to reveal heterogeneous cellular response to mechanical
Keitaro Kasahara1, Jumpei Muramatsu1, Yuta Kurashina2,3
1School of Integrated Design Engineering, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Keio University, 3-14-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama 223-8522, Japan.
Abstract:
Mechanical stimuli have been recognized as important for tissue maturation, homeostasis and constructing engineered three-dimensional (3D) tissues. However, we know little about the cellular mechanical response in tissues that could be considerably heterogeneous and spatiotemporally dynamic due to the complex structure of tissues. Here, we report a spatiotemporal single-cell tracking analysis of in vitro 3D tissues under mechanical stretch, to reveal the heterogeneous cellular behavior by using a developed stretch and optical live imaging system. The system could affect the cellular orientation and directly measure the distance of cells in in vitro 3D myoblast tissues (3DMTs) at the single-cell level. Moreover, we observed the spatiotemporal heterogeneous cellular locomotion and shape changes under mechanical stretch in 3DMTs. This single-cell tracking analysis can become a principal method to investigate the heterogeneous cellular response in tissues and provide insights that conventional analyses have not yet offered.
