Data for "Variability of the mechanical properties of a single bone cell population"

Pre-processed data obtained by AFM nano-indentation of MLO-A5 pre-osteocyte cells. The data pre-processing consisted in contact point fitting, tip-sample separation correction and drift correction of raw data, all performed in MATLAB (v2016a).<br><br>The experimental methodology and data processing are described in the author's thesis (Chapter 3). <br>Methods<br>* AFM cantilever preparation<br>Tip-less cantilevers (Windsor Scientific) with nominal spring constant of 0.2 N/m were customised by glueing a silica bead (D = 6 μm, Bangs Laboratories) at the tip extremity. <br><br>* AFM set-up<br>A NanoWizard 3 atomic force microscope (JPK Instruments AG) coupled to an Eclipse Ti-S optical inverted microscope (Nikon Instruments) was used for all the experiments.<br>The cells were washed in phosphate buffer solution (PBS) and fresh medium was added. Samples were positioned on the heated sample holder to allow for testing at 37◦C. Single cells were located through the coupled optical microscope and images of cell shape were recorded for morphological analysis.<br>The cantilever was centred over the location of interest and a grid of 5 points spaced 3 μm within each other was set. Force spectroscopy measurements were obtained on the 5-point grid for 3 times to collect a total of 15 data on each location. The relative set point and the approach velocity were set to 10 nN and 4 μm/s respectively. <b></b><i></i><br>