ABSTRACT
Cells are in complicated mechanical and physical microenvironment in vivo. The former mainly includes flow shear, tension, compression or torsion, and the latter covers stiffness and topography of extracellular matrix, spatial location, volume constraint or osmotic pressure, featured with various types, patterns, and parameters of mechanical or physical loading. Cell biomechanics mainly focuses on the alteration of mechanical properties of cells and the mechanical remodeling of subcellular components, the cell development, growth, proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis under distinct mechanical stimuli, and the cellular sensation, transmission, transduction, and responses to external forces. This review summarized the major progresses in cell biomechanics in 2021, including studies on cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells, osteoblasts, immune cells, cancer cells and stem cells, as well as the related new techniques.
ABSTRACT
As one of the major branches in biomechanics, cellular and molecular biomechanics have made much progress in mechano-biological and mechano-chemical coupling in the past decades. Cells sense various in vivo mechanical stimuli, which initiate downstream signaling via mechanosensitive proteins to balance external forces. It is required to understand what mechanical features of distinct cells are and how external forces are transduced to biochemical signals. Multi-scale integration from cellular, subcellular, to molecular level in a cell promotes the understanding of mechanosensation, mechanotransmission, mechanotransduction, and mechanoepigenetics. In this review, the progress update in cellular and molecular biomechanics is provided and relevant scientific issues, methodological approaches, and potential applications are discussed.