Testing nano-scale mechanics

Let's have a look on mechanical testing. This is a very simple process, you can try it yourself. The only thing to do, is to poke something with your fingers and "check" its mechanical properties (stiffness). How is it? Soft, hard? Nano-mechanical testing of a single living cell, is the same process,... but instead your fingers, which would destroy hundreds or thousands of cells, regardless of sensing anything, the tip of an AFM is an ideal choice. You can see on the following short video, how living cells can be "poked"... :)

Upon gently poking living cells, their mechanical parameters can be measured harmlessly. As stiffness is altered in cancerous cells, cellular mechanics has great importance in cancer research.