ABSTRACT
The mechanical properties of soft materials used in the biomedical field play an important role on their performance. In the field of tissue engineering, it is known that cells sense the mechanical properties of their environment, however some materials, such as Sylard 184 PDMS (poly(dimethylsiloxane)), have failed to elicit such response. It was proposed that differences in the mechanical properties of such soft materials, at different scales, could account for these discrepancies. Indeed, the variation in the elastic moduli obtained for soft materials characterised at different scales can span several orders of magnitude. This called for a side-by-side comparison of the mechanical behaviour of soft materials at different scales. Here we use indentation, rheology and atomic force microscopy nanoidentation (using different tip geometries) to characterise the mechanical properties of PDMS, poly(acrylamide) (PAAm) and carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) hydrogels at different length scales. Our results highlight the importance of surface adhesion and the resulting changes in contact area, and sample microstructural heterogeneity, in particular for the mechanical characterisation of ultra-soft substrates at the nano- to micro-scale.
ABSTRACT
The mechanical properties of naturally-derived matrices and biomaterials are thought to play an important role in directing cell adhesion, spreading, motility, proliferation and differentiation. However, recent reports have indicated that cells may respond to local nanoscale physical cues, rather than bulk mechanical properties. We had previously reported that primary keratinocytes and mesenchymal stem cells did not seem to respond to the bulk mechanical properties of poly(dimethyl siloxane) (PDMS) substrates. In this study, we examine the mechanical properties of weakly crosslinked PDMS substrates and observe a liquid-like behaviour, with complete stress relaxation. We then report the observation that HaCaT cells, an epidermal cell line, proliferate readily at the surface of uncrosslinked liquid PDMS, as well as on low viscosity (0.77 cSt) fluorinated oil. These results are surprising, considering current views in the field of mechanotransduction on the importance of bulk mechanical properties, but we find that strong mechanical interfaces, presumably resulting from protein assembly, are formed at liquid-liquid interfaces for which cell adhesion and proliferation are observed. Hence our results suggest that cells sense the nanoscale mechanical properties of liquid-liquid interfaces and that such physical cues are sufficient to sustain the proliferation of adherent cells.
