Biophysics articles within Nature Materials

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  • Article |

    A nanoscale polymer layer formed by mucins at the surface of tumour cells protects them against immune cell attack. This shield can be circumvented through immune cell engineering, using chimeric antigen receptors to stimulate natural killer and T cells or by tethering glycocalyx-editing enzymes to immune cells.

    • Sangwoo Park
    • , Marshall J. Colville
    •  & Matthew J. Paszek

  • News & Views |

    Non-equilibrium thermodynamics describes activity-stabilized mixed states in complex active-matter systems.

    • Tian Huang
    • , Qi Pan
    •  & Steve Granick

  • Article |

    Microtubules respond to mechanical compression by deforming, becoming more stable, which results in CLASP2 recruitment to the distorted shaft—a process crucial for cell migration through confined spaces.

    • Yuhui Li
    • , Ondřej Kučera
    •  & Manuel Théry

  • Article |

    Viscoelasticity is a universal mechanical feature of the extracellular matrix. Here the authors show that the extracellular matrix viscoelasticity guides tissue growth and symmetry breaking, a fundamental process in morphogenesis and oncogenesis.

    • Alberto Elosegui-Artola
    • , Anupam Gupta
    •  & David J. Mooney

  • News & Views |

    In the absence of biochemical gradients, cancer cell migration over fibrillar isotropic collagen can occur by a mechanical self-steering process involving asymmetric matrix deformation from the rear.

    • Katarina Wolf
    •  & Peter Friedl

  • Letter |

    Reconstituted cytoskeleton networks linked with catch bonds display increased mechanical strength and crack resistance than those containing slip bonds, and simultaneously being more deformable, which allows for better adaptability to new mechanical environments.

    • Yuval Mulla
    • , Mario J. Avellaneda
    •  & Gijsje H. Koenderink

  • Article |

    Directed cell movement known as durotaxis, typically associated with cellular migration in response to a substrate gradient of increasing stiffness, is now shown to also occur in the opposite direction, following a gradient of decreasing stiffness.

    • Aleksi Isomursu
    • , Keun-Young Park
    •  & David J. Odde

  • News & Views |

    Light-activated protein actuators composed of bioengineered motors and molecular scaffolds achieve millimetre-scale mechanical work, which holds promise for microrobotics applications.

    • Henry Hess

  • Article |

    Programmable triangular DNA blocks self-assemble into distinct icosahedral shells with specific geometry and apertures that can encapsulate viruses and decrease viral infection.

    • Christian Sigl
    • , Elena M. Willner
    •  & Hendrik Dietz

  • News & Views |

    The stiffness of the basement membrane is a determinant of the process of metastasis and patient survival. Netrin-4 is now shown to be a key regulator of the basement membrane stiffness.

    • Patrick Mehlen
    •  & Laurent Fattet

  • Article |

    The basement membrane stiffness is shown to be a more dominant determinant than pore size in regulating cancer cell invasion, metastasis formation and patient survival. This stiffness is now known to be affected by the ratio of netrin-4 to laminin, with more netrin-4 leading to softer basement membranes.

    • Raphael Reuten
    • , Sina Zendehroud
    •  & Janine T. Erler

  • News & Views |

    While integrin-based adhesions are thought to underlie many aspects of cell response to localized tension, another matrix receptor, syndecan-4, has now been shown to act as a mechanosensor, which triggers cell-wide integrin activation and adhesion reinforcement.

    • Christophe Guilluy
    •  & Monika E. Dolega

  • Article |

    Atomic force microscopy indentation measurements of cells cultured on soft substrates may result in an underestimation of cell stiffness. A model has now been developed that takes this soft substrate effect into account, revealing that cortical cell stiffness is largely independent of substrate mechanics.

    • Johannes Rheinlaender
    • , Andrea Dimitracopoulos
    •  & Kristian Franze

  • News & Views |

    Cancer cells have now been shown to lack rigidity-sensing due to alteration in cytoskeletal sensor proteins, but can be reversed from a transformed to a rigidity-dependent growth state by the sensor proteins, resulting in restoration of contractility and adhesion.

    • Edna C. Hardeman
    •  & Peter W. Gunning

  • News & Views |

    Using organic solvent shortens formation time of membrane nanosheets comprising proteins and copolymers, while tuning protein structure tailors the pore geometry, resulting in superior water permeation.

    • Andrew G. Livingston
    •  & Zhiwei Jiang

  • Article |

    Protein channels are highly selective, but application in membranes is limited due to low protein content. Here, protein channels are embedded into block copolymers to form nanosheets using rapid solvent casting, with better water permeability and similar molecular exclusions relative to other membrane systems.

    • Yu-Ming Tu
    • , Woochul Song
    •  & Manish Kumar

  • Article |

    A mechanism of cell response to localized tension shows that syndecan-4 synergizes with EGFR to elicit a mechanosignalling cascade that leads to adaptive cell stiffening through PI3K/kindlin-2 mediated integrin activation.

    • Antonios Chronopoulos
    • , Stephen D. Thorpe
    •  & Armando E. del Río Hernández

  • News & Views |

    Epithelial layers under compression avoid buckling by active contraction, but only up to a well-defined threshold at 35% strain, beyond which buckling occurs.

    • Ulrich S. Schwarz

  • News & Views |

    Nanofibre mimetic substrates reveal the presence of integrin nanoclusters bridged by unliganded receptors during early cell–matrix adhesion.

    • E. Ada Cavalcanti-Adam

  • Article |

    A range of cancer cell types are shown to lack rigidity-sensing due to alteration in specific cytoskeletal sensor proteins and this sensing ability can be reversed from a transformed to a rigidity-dependent growth state by the sensor proteins, resulting in restoration of contractility and adhesion.

    • Bo Yang
    • , Haguy Wolfenson
    •  & Michael P. Sheetz

  • Article |

    Integrin-mediated adhesions required for cell spreading and growth have now been shown, using super-resolution microscopy, to form on fibrous matrices through the dense assembly of integrins in nanoclusters that contain both ligand-bound and unliganded integrins.

    • Rishita Changede
    • , Haogang Cai
    •  & Michael P. Sheetz

  • Article |

    Epithelial tissues behave as pre-tensed viscoelastic sheets that can buffer against compression and rapidly recover from buckling. Epithelial mechanical properties define a tissue-intrinsic buckling threshold that dictates the compressive strain above which tissue folds become permanent.

    • Tom P. J. Wyatt
    • , Jonathan Fouchard
    •  & Guillaume T. Charras

  • News & Views |

    With their ability to give rise to many different cell types, stem cells have long been a target of scientists who seek to achieve control over their differentiation. New evidence suggests that stem cells influence their own fates through protein deposition and physical remodelling of their microenvironment.

    • Eric L. Qiao
    • , Sanjay Kumar
    •  & David V. Schaffer

  • News & Views |

    An intermediate affinity state of integrin αIIBβ3 has been identified to be a key player in platelet mechanosignalling.

    • X. Frank Zhang
    •  & Xuanhong Cheng

  • News & Views |

    Single-particle tracking of nanoparticles dispersed in the cytoplasm of living cells shows that non-specific interactions with the intracellular environment are the major contributors for the anomalous diffusion characteristics of intracellular motion.

    • Matthias Weiss

  • News & Views |

    A micropatterned human pluripotent stem cell-based developmental model was utilized to demonstrate the role of biophysical cues such as cell size and cytoskeletal contractile forces in directing patterning of neuroepithelial and neural plate border cells.

    • Mukul Tewary
    •  & Peter W. Zandstra

  • News & Views |

    Single-cell force spectroscopy reveals rapid, biphasic integrin activation and reinforcement of cell–matrix bonds during the initial steps of fibroblast adhesion.

    • Ning Wang

  • Article |

    Femtosecond laser pulses can induce local bulging or plasma ablation of silk with limited structural damage, thus offering a technique for cutting, patterning, bending and welding of silk with various other materials.

    • Mehra S. Sidhu
    • , Bhupesh Kumar
    •  & Kamal P. Singh

  • Article |

    Increased cellular expression of RAB5A, an important regulator of endocytic processes, brings epithelial cells from a jammed state to coordinated motion, and can facilitate wound closure, gastrulation and migration in constrained environments.

    • Chiara Malinverno
    • , Salvatore Corallino
    •  & Giorgio Scita

  • Letter |

    Experiments and theory show that plastic energy dissipation during cell deformation is linked to elastic cytoskeletal stresses.

    • Navid Bonakdar
    • , Richard Gerum
    •  & Ben Fabry

  • Article |

    A polymeric protein complex consisting of a newly identified magnetoreceptor protein and known magnetoreception-related photoreceptor cryptochromes exhibits spontaneous alignment in magnetic fields.

    • Siying Qin
    • , Hang Yin
    •  & Can Xie

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