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Updated: May 24, 2025

Traction Force Microscopy to Study B Lymphocyte Activation
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Traction Force Microscopy to Study B Lymphocyte Activation

Published on: July 23, 2020

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Traction Force Microscopy for Studying B Lymphocyte Mechanosensing

Yue Xu1,2, Chun Yang3, Yingyue Zeng4

  • 1State Key Laboratory of Membrane Biology, School of Life Sciences, Institute for Immunology, China Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Protein Sciences, Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Structural Biology, Beijing Key Lab for Immunological Research on Chronic Diseases, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

Methods in Molecular Biology (Clifton, N.J.)
|March 3, 2025
PubMed

B lymphocytes (B cells) are effector cells in humoral immunity. B cells recognize membrane-bound antigens through B-cell receptors in vivo, triggering signaling cascades and resulting in B-cell activation. During this process, cells exert myosin II-mediated traction to discriminate between different antigen densities and affinities. Traction force microscopy (TFM) allows for the quantitative measurement of dynamic traction generated by B cells. Experimental conditions must be optimized when conducting B-cell TFM tests. Here, we describe the general procedures for using TFM to profile the origin, dynamics, and the function of traction force during B-cell activation. Detailed experimental conditions have been listed, which instruct investigators to obtain high-quality TFM data for B-cell studies.

Keywords:
B-cell activationBCRLive cell imagingMechanosensingTraction force microscopy

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