Keynote lecture 5: “Cellular dynamism during force propagation revealed by live cell interferometry”

Cancer and many other diseases are characterized by changes in cell morphology, motion and mechanical rigidity. However, in live-cell-cytology stimulus-induced morphologic changes typically take 10–30 minutes to detect. Here, we employ live-cell-interferometry (LCI) to visualize the instantaneous response of a whole cell to mechanical stimulation, and we detect cytoskeletal remodeling behavior within 200 seconds. This behavior involved small, rapid changes in cell content and miniscule changes in shape, which would be difficult to detect with conventional or phase contrast microscopy alone, and is beyond the dynamic capability of AFM. We demonstrate that LCI provides a rapid, quantitative reconstruction of the cell body with no labeling that is highly complementary to traditional microscopy and flow cytometry, which require cell surface marker detection and/or destructive cell fixation for labeling.