Patrick W. Oakes

TL;DR: Increased understanding of the mechanics of actomyosin arrays that lack sarcomeric organization has revealed novel modes of regulation and force transmission and provides an example of how diverse mechanical behaviours at cellular scales can arise from common molecular components, underscoring the need for experiments and theories to bridge the molecular to cellular length scales.

TL;DR: Lamellar actin architecture at adhesion sites may serve as a structural template that facilitates focal adhesion maturation over a wide range of tension.

TL;DR: This work experimentally decouple the effects of substrate stiffness, focal adhesion density, and cell morphology to show that the total amount of work a cell does against the substrate to which it is adhered is regulated by the cell spread area alone.

TL;DR: It is shown that a strong correlation between adhesion size and traction force exists only during the initial stages of myosin-mediated adhesion maturation and growth, and that mature adhesions can withstand sixfold increases in tension without changes in size.

TL;DR: It is shown that rotation plays a critical role in building the actin-based component of the corset, which highlights how collective cell migration can be used to build a polarized tissue organization for organ morphogenesis.