Contribution of stress wave and cavitation bubble in evaluation of cell-cell adhesion by femtosecond laser-induced impulse

When an intense femtosecond laser is focused in a cell culture medium, shock wave, stress wave, and cavitation bubble are generated at the laser focal point. Cell-cell adhesion can be broken at the cellular level by the impacts of these factors. We have applied this breaking of the adhesion to an estimation of the cell-cell adhesion strength. In this application, it is important to identify which of these factors is the dominant factor that breaks the adhesion. Here we investigated this issue using streptavidin-coated microbeads adhering to a biotin-coated substrate as a mimic of the cell-cell adhesion. The results indicated that the break was induced mainly by the stress wave, not by the impact of the cavitation bubble.