Journal ArticleDOI
A computational tensegrity model predicts dynamic rheological behaviors in living cells.
TLDR
It is shown that a mathematical model of cell mechanics that depicts the intracellular cytoskeleton as a tensegrity structure composed of a prestressed network of interconnected microfilaments, microtubules, and intermediate filaments, also can predict fundamental dynamic behaviors of living cells.Abstract:
Rheological properties of living cells play a key role in the control of cell shape, growth, movement, and contractility, yet little is known about how these properties are governed. Past approaches to understanding cell mechanics focused on the contributions of membranes, the viscous cytoplasm, and the individual filamentous biopolymers that are found within the cytoskeleton. In contrast, recent work has revealed that the dynamic mechanical behavior of cells depends on generic system properties, rather than on a single molecular property of the cell. In this paper, we show that a mathematical model of cell mechanics that depicts the intracellular cytoskeleton as a tensegrity structure composed of a prestressed network of interconnected microfilaments, microtubules, and intermediate filaments, and that has previously explained static cellular properties, also can predict fundamental dynamic behaviors of living cells.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Cellular mechanotransduction: putting all the pieces together again.
TL;DR: Future research in this area will require analysis, understanding, and modeling of tensionally integrated systems of mechanochemical control, and the presence of isometric tension at all levels of these multiscale networks ensures that various molecular scale mechanochemical transduction mechanisms proceed simultaneously and produce a concerted response.
Journal ArticleDOI
Tensegrity-based mechanosensing from macro to micro.
TL;DR: How the use of tensegrity at multiple size scales in the authors' bodies guides mechanical force transfer from the macro to the micro, as well as how it facilitates conversion of mechanical signals into changes in ion flux, molecular binding kinetics, signal transduction, gene transcription, cell fate switching and developmental patterning is reviewed.
Journal ArticleDOI
The consensus mechanics of cultured mammalian cells
TL;DR: The frequency-dependent shear modulus of cultured mammalian cells is determined by using four different methods, both unique and well established, to clarify the effects of cytoskeletal heterogeneity, ATP-dependent processes, and cell regional variations on the interpretation of such measurements.
Journal ArticleDOI
Tensegrity, cellular biophysics, and the mechanics of living systems
TL;DR: It is described how tensegrity is used at multiple size scales in the hierarchy of life to both stabilize three-dimensional form and to channel forces from the macroscale to the nanoscale, thereby facilitating mechanochemical conversion at the molecular level.
Journal ArticleDOI
Linear and Nonlinear Rheology of Living Cells
Philip Kollmannsberger,Ben Fabry +1 more
TL;DR: This work has shown that under mechanical loading, cells exhibit creep and stress relaxation behavior that follows a power-law response rather than a classical exponential response, and all these observations can be linked by simple relationships with the power-laws exponent as the only organizing parameter.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Mechanotransduction across the cell surface and through the cytoskeleton
TL;DR: The results suggest that integrins act as mechanoreceptors and transmit mechanical signals to the cytoskeleton, which may be mediated simultaneously at multiple locations inside the cell through force-induced rearrangements within a tensionally integrated cytos skeleton.
Journal ArticleDOI
Demonstration of mechanical connections between integrins, cytoskeletal filaments, and nucleoplasm that stabilize nuclear structure
TL;DR: Molecular connections between integrins, cytoskeletal filaments, and nuclear scaffolds may provide a discrete path for mechanical signal transfer through cells as well as a mechanism for producing integrated changes in cell and nuclear structure in response to changes in extracellular matrix adhesivity or mechanics.
Journal ArticleDOI
Tensegrity I. Cell structure and hierarchical systems biology.
TL;DR: The evidence for cellular tensegrity at the molecular level is covered and how this building system may provide a structural basis for the hierarchical organization of living systems — from molecule to organism is described.
Journal ArticleDOI
Scaling the microrheology of living cells.
Ben Fabry,Geoffrey N. Maksym,James P. Butler,Michael Glogauer,Daniel Navajas,Jeffrey J. Fredberg +5 more
TL;DR: A scaling law is reported that governs both the elastic and frictional properties of a wide variety of living cell types, over a wide range of time scales and under a variety of biological interventions, and implies that cytoskeletal proteins may regulate cell mechanical properties mainly by modulating the effective noise temperature of the matrix.