Interactions of Cells with Elastic Cholesteryl Liquid Crystals

Abstract

Exploitation of elastic property of the liquid crystal to sense cells mechanics is a novel application. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis of cholesteryl liquid crystal has shown flexibility and elasticity of the material to sense cell contraction and relaxation over a period of time. Importantly, cells adhesion was precluded with the use of extracellular matrix proteins in this technique. The optimum operating range with linear elasticity of the cholesteryl liquid crystal is ≤ 0.1s^− 1 which has a good correlation with the shear rate of the cells originated from the focal adhesions. Localized contraction was observed with a good resolution. In addition, clear definition of deformation lines between two cells has shown their interacting path through active mechano-sensing.