The Application of Micropipette Aspiration in Molecular Mechanics of Single Cells

Micropipette aspiration is arguably the most classical technique in mechanical measurements and manipulations of single cells. Despite its simplicity, micropipette aspiration has been applied to a variety of experimental systems that span different length scales to study cell mechanics, nanoscale molecular mechanisms in single cells, bleb growth, and nucleus dynamics, to name a few. Enabled by micro/nanotechnology, several novel microfluidic devices have been developed recently with better accuracy, sensitivity, and throughput. Further technical advancements of microfluidics-based micropipette aspiration would have broad applications in both fundamental cell mechanics studies and for disease diagnostics.