Single-Cell Measurements Using Acoustic Force Spectroscopy (AFS)

Single-molecule force spectroscopy is a powerful tool to investigate the forces and motions related to interactions of biological molecules. Acoustic force spectroscopy (AFS) is a developed measurement tool to study single molecules or cells making use of acoustic standing waves. AFS permits high experimental throughput because many individual molecules can be manipulated and tracked in parallel. Moreover, a wide range of forces can be applied as well as a force loading rate with range of six orders of magnitude. At the same time, AFS stands out because of its simplicity and the compactness of the experimental setup. Even though the AFS setup is simple, it can still be challenging to perform high-quality measurements. Here we describe, in detail, how to setup, perform, and analyze an AFS measurement to determine cell adhesion.