An extended modeling of the micropipette aspiration experiment for the characterization of the Youngʹs modulus and Poissonʹs ratio of adherent thin biological samples: Numerical and experimental studies

The micropipette aspiration (MA) experiment remains a quite widely used micromanipulation technique for quantifying the elastic modulus of cells and, less frequently, of other biological samples. However, moduli estimations derived from MA experiments are only valid if the probed sample is non-adherent to the rigid substrate. This study extends this standard formulation by taking into account the influence of the sample adhesion. Using a finite element analysis of the sample aspiration into the micropipette, we derived a new expression of the aspirated length for linear elastic materials. Our results establish that (i) below a critical value, the thickness h of the probed sample must be considered to get an accurate value of its Youngʹs modulus (ii) this critical value depends both on the Poissonʹs ratio and on the sample adhesivity. Additionally, we propose a novel method which allows the computation of the intrinsic Youngʹs modulus of the adherent probed sample from its measured apparent elasticity modulus. Thanks to the set of computational graphs we derived from our theoretical analysis, we successfully validate this method by experiments performed on polyacrylamide gels. Interestingly, the original procedure we proposed allows a simultaneous quantification of the Youngʹs modulus and of the Poissonʹs ratio of the adherent gel. Thus, our revisited analysis of MA experiments extends the application domain of this technique, while contributing to decrease the dispersion of elastic modulus values obtained by this method.