TY - JOUR
T1 - Universal physical responses to stretch in the living cell
AU - Trepat, Xavier
AU - Deng, Linhong
AU - An, Steven S.
AU - Navajas, Daniel
AU - Tschumperlin, Daniel J.
AU - Gerthoffer, William T.
AU - Butler, James P.
AU - Fredberg, Jeffrey J.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements These studies were supported by grants from National Institutes of Health and from the Spanish Ministries of Education and Science and Health. We thank R. Panettieri for providing cells, and R. Farré, D. Fletcher, F. Ritort and V. Viasnoff for discussions.
PY - 2007/5/31
Y1 - 2007/5/31
N2 - With every beat of the heart, inflation of the lung or peristalsis of the gut, cell types of diverse function are subjected to substantial stretch. Stretch is a potent stimulus for growth, differentiation, migration, remodelling and gene expression. Here, we report that in response to transient stretch the cytoskeleton fluidizes in such a way as to define a universal response class. This finding implicates mechanisms mediated not only by specific signalling intermediates, as is usually assumed, but also by non-specific actions of a slowly evolving network of physical forces. These results support the idea that the cell interior is at once a crowded chemical space and a fragile soft material in which the effects of biochemistry, molecular crowding and physical forces are complex and inseparable, yet conspire nonetheless to yield remarkably simple phenomenological laws. These laws seem to be both universal and primitive, and thus comprise a striking intersection between the worlds of cell biology and soft matter physics.
AB - With every beat of the heart, inflation of the lung or peristalsis of the gut, cell types of diverse function are subjected to substantial stretch. Stretch is a potent stimulus for growth, differentiation, migration, remodelling and gene expression. Here, we report that in response to transient stretch the cytoskeleton fluidizes in such a way as to define a universal response class. This finding implicates mechanisms mediated not only by specific signalling intermediates, as is usually assumed, but also by non-specific actions of a slowly evolving network of physical forces. These results support the idea that the cell interior is at once a crowded chemical space and a fragile soft material in which the effects of biochemistry, molecular crowding and physical forces are complex and inseparable, yet conspire nonetheless to yield remarkably simple phenomenological laws. These laws seem to be both universal and primitive, and thus comprise a striking intersection between the worlds of cell biology and soft matter physics.
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U2 - 10.1038/nature05824
DO - 10.1038/nature05824
M3 - Article
C2 - 17538621
AN - SCOPUS:34249865351
SN - 0028-0836
VL - 447
SP - 592
EP - 595
JO - Nature
JF - Nature
IS - 7144
ER -