Each heartbeat results from the concerted action of millions of heart muscle cells. If researchers understood better how heart disease affects the individual cells, they might be able to detect early signs of trouble. Now Gisela Lin, an electrical engineer at UCLA, has created a microscopic instrument that can measure how much force a single heart cell exerts when it contracts.
Lin’s measuring device, which is less than a tenth of an inch square, consists of a pair of silicon clamps suspended on delicate beams from the edge of a silicon chip. The device is lit from below, so that when Lin affixes the clamps to a rat’s heart cell she can observe it through a microscope and project an image of it onto a video monitor. To keep the cell alive she submerges the entire device in a saline solution.
Like other muscle cells, heart cells are permeated by ...
