Extracting the Young's Modulus of Native Murine Pulmonary Basement Membranes from Atomic Force Microscopy derived Force Maps

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) allows the characterization of the mechanical properties of a sample with a spatial resolution of several tens of nanometers. Because mammalian cells sense and react to the mechanics of their immediate microenvironment, the characterization of biomechanical properties of tissues with high spatial resolution is crucial for understanding various developmental, homeostatic, and pathological processes. The basement membrane (BM), a roughly 100 - 400 nm thin extracellular matrix (ECM) substructure, plays a significant role in tumor progression and metastasis formation. Although determining Young's modulus of such a thin ECM substructure is challenging, biomechanical data of the BM provides fundamental new insights into how the BM affects cell behavior and, in addition, offers valuable diagnostic potential. Here, we present a visualized protocol for assessing BM mechanics in murine lung tissue, which is one of the major organs prone to metastasis. We describe an efficient workflow for determining the Young's modulus of the BM, which is located between the endothelial and epithelial cell layers in lung tissue. The step-by-step instructions comprise murine lung tissue freezing, cryosectioning, and AFM force-map recording on tissue sections. Additionally, we provide a semi-automatic data analysis procedure using the CANTER Processing Toolbox, an in-house developed user-friendly AFM data analysis software. This tool enables automatic loading of recorded force maps, conversion of force versus piezo-extension curves to force versus indentation curves, computation of Young's moduli, and generation of Young's modulus maps. Finally, it shows how to determine and isolate Young's modulus values derived from the pulmonary BM through the use of a spatial filtering tool.