Just as music pulls some folks to the dance floor while others remain stuck to their chairs, sound can now be used to pull some cells loose from their substrate while other cells stay put. Cells attach and release from the extracellular matrix and from each other for a variety of physiological reasons. But existing methods to measure the intensity and kinetics of these interactions either lack precision or are exceptionally laborious, explains molecular biophysicist Gijs Wuite of Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.
While thinking of ways to achieve both accuracy and high throughput, Wuite says, he saw a movie showing microscopic organisms being manipulated with sound waves. He wondered whether such acoustic forces could also be used to explore molecular and cellular interactions.
So Wuite and colleagues developed single-cell acoustic force spectroscopy (scAFS), which uses acoustic waves to test whether cells are adhered to a given substrate (cells or molecules) ...
