PhD Student - Topic: Picoscopic mass analysis of mammalian cells progressing through the cell cycle in Zürich

Prof. Dr. Daniel J. Müller, Prof. Dr. Christoph Gerber, ETH Zürich and Swiss Nanoscience Institute, University Basel

The progression of cells through the cell cycle is a fundamental, physiological process (1). However, the interplay between the regulation of cell growth and mass and cell cycle awaits accurate physical quantification. Basic questions, such as to what extent the mass of adherent cells is regulated during different phases of the cell cycle, remain to be answered (2). To date, mass regulation in different states of the adherent cell (for example a cell cycle phase) could not be characterized, since only large population of cells that are not synchronized in their cycle state are commonly probed. To gain fundamental insights in cell mass regulation thus requires the mass characterization of single cells. We have recently developed a method to noninvasively measure the mass of single adherent mammalian cells at high mass and time resolution (3). This picobalance is based on a photothermally actuated microcantilever, which is mounted onto an inverted microscope and operates under incubator conditions. For mass measurements, a single cell is adhered to an microcantilever oscillating in the Ångstrom range. By determining the natural resonance frequency of the cantilever with and without an attached cell, the mass of a cell is measured.

(1) The regulation of cell size. Cell (2013) 154, 1194-1205. ; (2) Live-cell mass profiling: an emerging approach in quantitative biophysics. Nat Methods (2014) 11, 1221-1228. ; (3) Inertial picobalance reveals fast mass fluctuations in mammalian cells. Nature (2017) 550, 500-505.

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