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Stem cell mechanics

Auxetic nuclei

Nature Materials volume 13, pages 540–542 (2014)Cite this article

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The nuclei of naive mouse embryonic stem cells that are transitioning towards differentiation expand when the cells are stretched and contract when they are compressed. What drives this auxetic phenotype is, however, unclear.

The characterization of both metastable and fully committed embryonic stem cells (ESCs) — pluripotent cells that are able to differentiate into almost all cell types in the body — is highly elusive. Because metastable cells can return to their undifferentiated state or become fully committed to differentiation, these physiological ESC states are crucial to the understanding and control of differentiation and de-differentiation — a process where differentiated cells are reprogrammed back into undifferentiated pluripotent cells — and hence to tissue-engineering and regenerative-medicine applications. Writing in Nature Materials, Kevin Chalut and colleagues report the discovery of an unexpected biophysical phenotype of the nuclei of mouse ESCs in the metastable transition state: contrary to the behaviour of most known materials, the nucleus of the cell expands when stretched1.

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Figure 1: The nucleus of an embryonic stem cell in the transition state expands when stretched.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ning Wang is in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, School of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China, College of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA,

    Ning Wang

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  1. Ning Wang
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Correspondence to Ning Wang.

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Wang, N. Auxetic nuclei. Nature Mater 13, 540–542 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3987

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