Optical Phase Measurements of Disorder Strength Link Microstructure to Cell Stiffness.

There have been sustained efforts on the part of cell biologists to understand the mechanisms by which cells respond to mechanical stimuli. To this end, many rheological tools have been developed to characterize cellular stiffness. However, measurement of cellular viscoelastic properties has been limited in scope by the nature of most microrheological methods, which require direct mechanical contact, applied at the single-cell level.