Sitoiskelet iplikçiklerin mems kuvvet algılayıcı ve floresan mikroskopisi kullanılarak gerçek zamanlı incelenmesi

The ability of cells to resist and exert mechanical forces allows them to perform many essential tasks such as cell growth, orientation, migration, and division. Cytoskeleton is the protein network of the cells that provides this ability as well as mechanical strength. In the absence of cytoskeletal components, cells experience significant embrittlement and this causes various human diseases. Understanding the mechanisms that determine how cells withstand and exert the mechanical stimuli is therefore significant to the diagnosis and treatment of cytoskeleton-related diseases. For this purpose, two different technologies with the major objective of observing the behavior of cytoskeletal filaments under local loads are developed. The first technology is based on the idea of building a smart surface comprising of MEMS sensors that can measure in-plane forces acting on the cytoskeletal filaments. The design of force sensors is geared towards optimizing both the mechanical sensitivity and piezoresistive response. Fabrication work is carried out through submicron patterning and doping by ion implantation. The initial fabrication results on silicon test and SOI wafers are presented. The second technology developed within the scope of this study is to construct a miniaturized stretcher integrated with a fluorescence microscope, which can load very thin diaphragms and measure associated minute forces. The integration is also enhanced with a synchronization enabling us to keep a certain area in the field of view during the entire duration of stretching. By applying sub-pixel particle tracking algorithm to the deformed micrographs, deformation and in-plane strains in the cells or in the substrates can be determined with a high spatiotemporal resolution. This work addresses two current shortcomings of non-contact strain measurement of soft matter: i) real-time measurement, and ii) high spatial resolution. The proposed technique can overcome this challenge and provides a displacement measurement resolution of 116 nm and a strain resolution of 0.04% over a gage length of 300 µm.