Published: Cellular mechanosensitivity to substrate stiffness decreases with increasing dissimilarity to cell stiffness
A study showing that cellular mechanosensitivity to substrate stiffness decreases with increasing dissimilarity between cell and substrate stiffness by T Abdalrahman, L Duibuis, J Green, NH Davies and T Franz appears in Biomechanics and Modelling in Mechanobiology.
We investigated for a single cell the effects of (1) different cell-substrate attachment (2) and different substrate modulus Es on intracellular deformations. A fibroblast was geometrically reconstructed from confocal micrographs. Finite element models of the cell on
a planar substrate were developed, and intracellular deformations due to substrate stretch of λ = 1.1 were assessed for cell-substrate attachment implemented as full basal contact (FC) and 124 focal adhesions (FA), respectively,
The results show (1) the importance of representing FA in cell models and (2) higher cellular mechanical sensitivity for substrate stiffness changes in the range of cell stiffness. The latter indicates that matching substrate stiffness to cell stiffness, and moderate variation of the former is very effective for controlled variation of cell deformation.
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