The vibration of a cell membrane plays a key role in the regulation of cell shape and the behavior of cells. However, most existing approaches for the measurement of cell vibration require either exogenous modification or sophisticated techniques, and the main challenge lies in developing methods that can monitor membrane vibration of living cells directly. Herein, a noninvasive strategy based on ultrasmall quartz nanopipettes is introduced. With a tip size of less than 100 nm, nanopipettes can be spatially controlled for precision targeting of a specific location on the membrane of single living cells. Surprisingly, by employing a constant voltage, stable cyclic oscillations are observed from the continuous current versus time traces. The time-domain current can be decomposed into two basic waves: the high-frequency one indicates the local membrane vibration driven by the electro-osmotic flow from the nanopipette, whereas the low-frequency one indicates the natural frequency of the whole cell. This provides a simple but reliable method to test local and global membrane vibration of single living cells simultaneously with little damage, which provides a tool for the quantification of drugs, disease, or mutations of the cell structure.

中文翻译：

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通过使用纳米移液管探测单个活细胞的膜振动。

细胞膜的振动在细胞形状和细胞行为的调节中起着关键作用。然而，大多数现有的测量细胞振动的方法需要外源修饰或复杂的技术，而主要挑战在于开发可直接监测活细胞膜振动的方法。在此，介绍了一种基于超小型石英纳米吸管的非侵入性策略。尖端尺寸小于100 nm，可以对纳米移液器进行空间控制，以精确靶向单个活细胞膜上的特定位置。出乎意料的是，通过采用恒定电压，从连续电流与时间的关系曲线可以观察到稳定的周期性振荡。时域电流可以分解为两个基本波：高频一个表示由纳米吸管产生的电渗流驱动的局部膜振动，而低频一个表示整个细胞的固有频率。这提供了一种简单而可靠的方法，可以同时测试单个活细胞的局部和全局膜振动而几乎不造成损害，这为定量药物，疾病或细胞结构突变提供了一种工具。