Mechanical microscopy of cancer cells: TGF-β induced epithelial to mesenchymal transition corresponds to low intracellular viscosity in cancer cells

Abstract

Viscosity is an essential parameter that regulates bio-molecular reaction rates of diffusion-driven cellular processes. Hence, abnormal viscosity levels are often associated with various diseases and malfunctions like cancer. For this reason, monitoring intracellular viscosity becomes vital. While several approaches have been developed for in vitro and in vivo measurement of viscosity, analysis of intracellular viscosity in live cells has not yet been well realized. Our research introduces a novel, natural frequency-based, non-invasive method to determine the intracellular viscosity in cells. This method can not only efficiently analyze the differences in intracellular viscosity post modulation with molecules like PEG or glucose but is sensitive enough to distinguish the difference in intra-cellular viscosity among various cancer cell lines such as Huh-7, MCF-7, and MDAMB-231. Interestingly, TGF-β a cytokine reported to induce epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT), a feature associated with cancer invasiveness resulted in reduced viscosity of cancer cells, as captured through our method. To corroborate our findings with existing methods of analysis, we analyzed intra-cellular viscosity with a previously described viscosity-sensitive molecular rotor-based fluorophore-TPSII. In parity with our position sensing device (PSD)-based approach, an increase in fluorescence intensity was observed with viscosity enhancers, while, TGF-β exposure resulted in its reduction in the cells studied. This is the first study of its kind that attempts to characterize differences in intracellular viscosity using a novel, non-invasive PSD-based method.