Published in

American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science Advances, 18(8), 2022

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abn6093

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Frequency-dependent transition in power-law rheological behavior of living cells

Journal article published in 2022 by Jiu-Tao Hang ORCID, Guang-Kui Xu ORCID, Huajian Gao ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

Living cells are active viscoelastic materials exhibiting diverse mechanical behaviors at different time scales. However, dynamical rheological characteristics of cells in frequency range spanning many orders of magnitude, especially in high frequencies, remain poorly understood. Here, we show that a self-similar hierarchical model can capture cell’s power-law rheological characteristics in different frequency scales. In low-frequency scales, the storage and loss moduli exhibit a weak power-law dependence on frequency with same exponent. In high-frequency scales, the storage modulus becomes a constant, while the loss modulus shows a power-law dependence on frequency with an exponent of 1.0. The transition between low- and high-frequency scales is defined by a transition frequency based on cell’s mechanical parameters. The cytoskeletal differences of different cell types or states can be characterized by changes in mechanical parameters in the model. This study provides valuable insights into potentially using mechanics-based markers for cell classification and cancer diagnosis.