Abstract
The mechanical properties of a single cell play substantial roles in cell mitosis, differentiation, and carcinogenesis. According to the difference of elastic modulus between the benign cell and the tumor cell, it has been shown that the mechanical properties of cells, as special biomarkers, may contribute greatly to disease diagnosis and drug screening. However, the mechanical properties of cells at different cell cycle stages are still not clear, which may mislead us when we use them as biomarkers. In this paper, the target regions of the human osteosarcoma cell were precisely scanned without causing any cell damage by using an atomic force microscopy (AFM) for the first time. Then, the elasticity properties of the human osteosarcoma cells were investigated quantitatively at various regions and cell cycle stages. The 32 × 32 resolution map of the elasticity showed that the elastic modulus of the cells at the interphase was larger than that at the telophase of mitosis. Moreover, the elastic modulus of the cell in the peripheral region was larger than that in the nuclear region of the cell. This work provides an accurate approach to measure the elasticity properties of cells at different stages of the cell cycle for further application in the disease diagnosis.