RESUME

Cell and protein mechanics has applications ranging from cellular development to tissue engineering. The primary objective of the project is to demonstrate a method for design and fabrication of a highly compliant microbeam array for measuring cell stiffnesses (neurons) in a highly parallel manner. The long term objectives include understanding the effects of various proteins have in determining the mechanical properties of axons and various pharmaceuticals play in affecting neural growth characteristics and also developing neuronal based biosensor device. The microbeam array may also be used for printing proteins such as lysine and laminin on substrates for applications such as cell printing. The chick forebrain neurons will be printed as an array and will be stretched by using our PicoNewton force transduction (PNFT) device in a parallel manner.

The chick forebrain dissociation on glass substrate

ESEM Image of straight walled 100x100 PDMS Microbeam array.Fabricated by photolithography and replica molding.The diameter of the beams are 40um and the length is 150um.

Optical micrograph of a portion of the microfabricated tapered PDMS 100 x 100 microbeam arrays. The base diameters of the beams are approximately 10 mm and the length is approximately 100 mm.

Brightfield optical microscopy image of mouse laminin printed on a glass
coverslip revealing a pattern identical to the microbeam array and the intended cell printingpattern. A laminin substrate is critical to cell adhesion. The non-printed regions will allow for unhindered force measurement, since cells will experience less surface interaction forcewithin this region.

The PDMS microbeams are deflected using the Eppendorf micromanipulator to determine the stiffness of the of them using pre-calibrated Vecco Probes