Elastic and viscoelastic characterization of mouse oocytes using micropipette indentation

Liu, Xinyu; Shi, Jiayi; Zong, Zong; Wan, Kai-Tak; Sun, Yu

Affiliations

¹Department of Mechanical Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

²Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, USA

³Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Abstract and keywords

This paper reports the first quantitative comparison study of elastic and viscoelastic properties of oocytes from young and aged mice. A force measurement technique, including a poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) cell holding device and a sub-pixel computer vision tracking algorithm, is utilized for measuring forces applied to an oocyte and resultant cell deformations in real time during oocyte manipulation. To characterize elastic and viscoelastic properties of the oocytes, a stress-relaxation indentation test is performed. A two-step, large-deformation mechanical model is developed to extract the mechanical properties of the oocytes from the measured force–deformation data. The experimental results demonstrate that the aged oocytes are significantly softer (instantaneous modulus: 2.2 vs. 5.2 kPa in young oocytes) but more viscous (relaxation time: 4.1 vs. 2.3 s in young oocytes) than the young oocytes.

Keywords: Stress-relaxation test; PDMS device; Cell force measurement; Large deformation; Young’s modulus; Viscoelastic properties; Aged mouse; BioMEMS; Cell mechanics

Links

DOI: 10.1007/s10439-012-0595-3

PubMed: 22644532

History

Received: 2012-02-23

Accepted: 2012-05-14

Online: 2012-05-30

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Cited By (5)

Year	Entry
2017	Zhang W. Force-Controlled Robotic Micromanipulation for Mechanotransduction Studies of Drosophila* Larvae* [PhD thesis]. McGill University; February 2017.
2019	Dong X. Robotic Micromanipulation of the Nematode Worm Caenorhabditis Elegans [PhD thesis]. McGill University; February 2019.
2019	Qu J. Multi-Physical Characterization of Micro- and Nanomaterials [PhD thesis]. McGill University; April 2019.
2021	Pan P. Robotic Micromanipulation of Small Model Organisms [PhD thesis]. McGill University; August 2021.
2017	Wong CY. Automation of Single Cell Manipulation for Embryo Biopsy [PhD thesis]. University of Toronto; 2017.