Intracellular nonequilibrium fluctuating stresses indicate how nonlinear cellular mechanical properties adapt to microenvironmental rigidity
Open Access
- 3 April 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Scientific Reports
- Vol. 10 (1), 1-8
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-62567-x
Abstract
Living cells are known to be in thermodynamically nonequilibrium, which is largely brought about by intracellular molecular motors. The motors consume chemical energies to generate stresses and reorganize the cytoskeleton for the cell to move and divide. However, since there has been a lack of direct measurements characterizing intracellular stresses, questions remained unanswered on the intricacies of how cells use such stresses to regulate their internal mechanical integrity in different microenvironments. This report describes a new experimental approach by which we reveal an environmental rigidity-dependent intracellular stiffness that increases with intracellular stress - a revelation obtained, surprisingly, from a correlation between the fluctuations in cellular stiffness and that of intracellular stresses. More surprisingly, by varying two distinct parameters, environmental rigidity and motor protein activities, we observe that the stiffness-stress relationship follows the same curve. This finding provides some insight into the intricacies by suggesting that cells can regulate their responses to their mechanical microenvironment by adjusting their intracellular stress.This publication has 45 references indexed in Scilit:
- Measuring mechanical tension across vinculin reveals regulation of focal adhesion dynamicsNature, 2010
- Physical forces during collective cell migrationNature Physics, 2009
- Mechanotransduction at a distance: mechanically coupling the extracellular matrix with the nucleusNature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, 2009
- Mechanotransduction – a field pulling together?Journal of Cell Science, 2008
- Nonequilibrium Mechanics of Active Cytoskeletal NetworksScience, 2007
- Matrix Elasticity Directs Stem Cell Lineage SpecificationCell, 2006
- Mechanotransduction at Cell-Matrix and Cell-Cell ContactsAnnual Review of Biomedical Engineering, 2004
- Elastic Behavior of Cross-Linked and Bundled Actin NetworksScience, 2004
- Cell shape provides global control of focal adhesion assemblyBiochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, 2003
- Cell prestress. I. Stiffness and prestress are closely associated in adherent contractile cellsAmerican Journal of Physiology-Cell Physiology, 2002