Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
This collection of recent articles from Nature Research journals focuses on the latest efforts to understand the roles of mechanical forces in animal cells and tissues. It highlights the broad involvement of mechanical forces in different biological contexts, their roles in development, physiology and disease, and discusses how these forces are sensed and transduced to produce biologically-relevant responses. The collection also showcases new technical approaches to study and modulate mechanobiology, which in the future could be used control cell fate and behaviour for therapeutic benefits. This collection is aimed for researchers from a broad range of disciplines — biologists, physicists and theoreticians alike — and we hope that it will foster inter-disciplinary initiatives to study biological systems.
Mechanical forces are important regulators of cell function and behaviour. This role is partly achieved through the modulation of cell metabolism, which, reciprocally, affects tissue mechanics. Unravelling the mechanisms of this crosstalk will increase our understanding of how cells interact with their microenvironment.
Mechanical forces influence both cytoplasmic and nuclear events. Kirby and Lammerding discuss recent evidence suggesting that the nucleus itself is a mechanosensor and methods to study nuclear mechanotransduction.
Advances in biomaterials have enabled control over desired cell responses. Here, the authors highlight key analytical and bioprocessing techniques, outlining a framework for incorporating these tools into designing functionally optimal biomaterials.
Coordinated movements of cell collectives are important for morphogenesis, tissue regeneration and cancer cell dissemination. Recent studies, mainly using novelin vitroapproaches, have provided new insights into the mechanisms governing this multicellular coordination, highlighting the key role of the mechanosensitivity of adherens junctions and mechanical cell–cell coupling in collective cell behaviours.
Mechanical forces and electrical fields are crucial for cellular signalling and can be both inducers and indicators of disease. This Review highlights advances in nanoscale, in vivo, optical probes, discussing spatial and temporal resolution, stability and stimuli sensitivity in bioimaging.
Physical cues regulate stem cell fate and function during embryonic development and in adult tissues. The biophysical and biochemical properties of the stem cell microenvironment can be precisely manipulated using synthetic niches, which provide key insights into how mechanical stimuli regulate stem cell function and can be used to maintain and guide stem cells for regenerative therapies.
Mechanical cues from the microenvironment can be efficiently transmitted to the nucleus to engage in the regulation of genome organization and gene expression. Recent technological and theoretical progress sheds new light on the relationships between cell mechanics, nuclear and chromosomal architecture and gene transcription.
Soon after their discovery in 2010, Piezo channels became a paradigm for studying mechanosensitive ion channels. These channels respond to physiologically relevant forces in diverse cellular contexts, and their dysfunction has been linked to various diseases. We are now starting to understand gating mechanisms of Piezo channels and their key roles in physiology.
The transcription factors YAP and TAZ have recently emerged as being conserved transducers of mechanical signals into cells and mediators of processes such as proliferation, migration and cell fate decision. The roles of YAP-mediated and TAZ-mediated mechanotransduction have now been documented in many physiological and pathological contexts, providing novel insights into cellular mechano-responses and their consequences.
As leukocytes travel in the bloodstream, navigate through tissues and mediate effector functions, their behaviour is influenced by mechanical forces. In this Review, Morgan Huse explains how mechanical force regulates receptor activation, cell migration, intracellular signalling and intercellular communication.
The field of active matter studies how internally driven motile components self-organize into large-scale dynamical states and patterns. This Review discusses how active matter concepts are important for understanding cell biology, and how the use of biochemical components enables the creation of new inherently non-equilibrium materials with unique properties that have so far been mostly restricted to living organisms.
The actin cytoskeleton of B cells is extensively coupled to B cell receptor (BCR) signalling pathways. This Review summarizes recent evidence that indicates that actin orchestrates BCR signalling at the plasma membrane, and discusses the role of the cytoskeleton in antigen presentation, affinity maturation and the functional specialization of B cells.
Physical forces influence the growth and development of all organisms. In the second Review in the Series on Mechanobiology, Trepat and co-authors describe techniques to measure forces generated by cells, and discuss their use and limitations.
In this Review, we will discuss how the interplay and feedback between mechanical and biochemical signals control tissue morphogenesis and cell fate specification in embryonic development.
Integrin extracellular matrix receptors establish contacts between the cell interior and the cell microenvironment. Integrins are subjected to complex biochemical and mechanical regulation, which allows cells to respond to extracellular matrix with different physicochemical properties and fine-tunes cell behaviour.