Poroelasticity of cell nuclei revealed through atomic force microscopy characterization

With great potential in precision medical application, cell biomechanics is rising as a hot topic in biology. Cell nucleus, as the largest component within cell, not only contributes greatly to the cell's mechanical behavior, but also serves as the most vital component within cell. However, cell nucleus' mechanics is still far from unambiguous up to now. In this paper, we attempted to characterize and evaluate the mechanical property of isolated cell nuclei using Atomic Force Microscopy with a tipless probe. As indicated from typical indentation, changing loading rate and stress relaxation experiment results, cell nuclei showed significant dynamically mechanical property, i.e., time-dependent mechanics. Furthermore, through theoretical analysis, finite element simulation and stress relaxation experiment, the nature of nucleus' mechanics was better described by poroelasticity, rather than viscoelasticity. Therefore, the essence of nucleus' mechanics was clarified to be poroelastic through a sophisticated analysis. Finally, we estimated the poroelastic parameters for nuclei of two types of cells through a combination of experimental data and finite element simulation