Mechanical regulation of cell function with geometrically modulated elastomeric substrates

By Jianping Fu, Yang-kao Wang, Michael T. Yang, Ravi A. Desai, Xiang Yu, Zhijun Liu, Christopher S. Chen. Nature Methods, 2010

1,063 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report the establishment of a library of micromolded elastomeric micropost arrays to modulate substrate rigidity independently of effects on adhesive and other material surface properties. We demonstrated that micropost rigidity impacts cell morphology, focal adhesions, cytoskeletal contractility and stem cell differentiation. Furthermore, early changes in cytoskeletal contractility predicted later stem cell fate decisions in single cells.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Cell Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4919fc1e7c711f32a4f1429c8f55b096dbc572f7

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In Biomedical Engineering

In Cell Biology

Citations in the corpus

The Emerging Frontiers and Applications of High-Resolution 3D Printing (2017, methodology): “For example, inductively coupled plasma etching (ICP) was used to achieve batch fabrication of a large volume of silicon micropost array masters and mass-production of the elastomeric polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) micropost arrays, which were used to study the effect of substrate rigidity on cell beha”
Hydrodynamic stretching of single cells for large population mechanical phenotyping (2012, background): “The ability for a biophysical marker to change prior to molecular markers has been observed in neural (37) and mesenchymal stem cells (38) as well.”
Mesenchymal stem cell perspective: cell biology to clinical progress (2019, background): “Cytoskeletal contraction forces clearly contribute to differentiation, with the higher forces exerted on stiffer substrates favoring a stiff tissue (bone) lineage.(96,100) Smooth muscle actin (SMA) assembles into high tension stress fibers and is understandably upregulated in MSCs on stiff substrate”
Engineering microscale topographies to control the cell–substrate interface (2012, background): “(a) Micropillars of varying heights depicted using finite-element analysis and with spring constant, K [151].”
Review on Cell Mechanics: Experimental and Modeling Approaches (2013, background): “Such active models could, for example, uncover the mechanisms by which a cell seeded on stiffer substrates exhibits a higher apparent stiffness [147,444,456,457].”
Modeling Physiological Events in 2D vs. 3D Cell Culture. (2017, background): “To control cell shape in 2D cell culture, micro-patterned substrates, such as cell-adhesive islands (30), microwells (121), and micropillars (40), have been created to customize the 2D shape of cells and help study the effects of cell shape on bioactivities.”
Micropatterning as a tool to decipher cell morphogenesis and functions (2010, methodology): “Alternatively, arrays of micropillars of various aspect ratios have been used (Fu et al., 2010; Ladoux et al., 2010), which can be micropatterned using microcontact printing (Liu et al., 2010; Tan et al., 2003).”
Deconstructing the third dimension – how 3D culture microenvironments alter cellular cues (2012, methodology): “The images in the Figure were adapted with permission from Kilian et al., 2010 (A), Desai et al., 2009 (B), Fu et al., 2010 (C), Bettinger et al., 2009 (E), Teixeira et al., 2003 (F), Gómez-Sjöberg et al., 2007 (G) (Kilian et al., 2010; Desai et al., 2009; Fu et al., 2010; Bettinger et al., 2009;…”
Physics of adherent cells (2013, background): “For example, it has been shown that the differentiation of stem cells can be guided by the mechanical or adhesive properties of the substrate (Engler et al., 2006; Fu et al., 2010; Kilian et al., 2010).”