Mechanics of cells and tissues

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.