Cell mechanics and the cytoskeleton

By Daniel A. Fletcher, R. Mullins. Nature, 2010

2,854 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The ability of a eukaryotic cell to resist deformation, to transport intracellular cargo and to change shape during movement depends on the cytoskeleton, an interconnected network of filamentous polymers and regulatory proteins. Recent work has demonstrated that both internal and external physical forces can act through the cytoskeleton to affect local mechanical properties and cellular behaviour. Attention is now focused on how cytoskeletal networks generate, transmit and respond to mechanical signals over both short and long timescales. An important insight emerging from this work is that long-lived cytoskeletal structures may act as epigenetic determinants of cell shape, function and fate.

Subfields: Cell Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6bb25a9c60b8152de996cf461149b6d8ddd0e0aa

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cell Biology

Citations in the corpus

The Multiple Origins of Complex Multicellularity (2011, background): “As a result, eukaryotic cells can change shape or physiology in response to molecular signals, permitting processes such as phagocytosis, amoeboid locomotion, and permanent cell differentiation (Fletcher & Mullins 2010).”
Modeling semiflexible polymer networks (2014, background): “Quantitative measurements of the properties of biopolymer systems in their native environment in vivo remains a formidable experimental challenge (Fletcher and Mullins, 2010).”
Cellular Mechanotransduction: From Tension to Function (2018, background): “It provides mechanical support to the cells and controls their motility, shape and tension homeostasis (Fletcher and Mullins, 2010).”
Criticality and isostaticity in fibre networks (2010, background): “Interconnected networks of filamentous proteins also appear in numerous biological context”
Stochastic mechano-chemical kinetics of molecular motors: A multidisciplinary enterprise from a physicist’s perspective (2012, background): “The mechanical properties of the cell depends on its cytoskeleton The cytoskeleton of an eukaryotic cell maintains its architecture [2223, 2224, 2126, 2225].”
Engineering microscale topographies to control the cell–substrate interface (2012, background): “The effect of physical stimuli on cellular function has long been recognized [11,17-21].”
Review on Cell Mechanics: Experimental and Modeling Approaches (2013, background): “In addition to maintaining a cell’s shape, it organizes a cell’s organelles, serves as pathways for molecular motor proteins to shuttle cargo between regions of a cell, and acts as a dynamic structure that resists, transmits, and generates cellular forces [28,29].”
The molecular mechanisms and therapeutic strategies of EMT in tumor progression and metastasis (2022, background): “and coalesce into a single cell layer to form the basic epithelial tissue [27, 28].”
Cell Stiffness Is a Biomarker of the Metastatic Potential of Ovarian Cancer Cells (2012, background): “The mechanical integrity of cells is regulated by a dynamic network of structural, cross-linking, and signaling molecules [1].”
Physics of adherent cells (2013, background): “Actin (in both monomeric and polymeric forms) comprises between 5%-10% of the protein in eukaryotic cells and is of great importance in cell structure and motility (Fletcher and Mullins, 2010; Stricker et al., 2010).”
Particle tracking in living cells: a review of the mean square displacement method and beyond (2013, background): “The cytoskeletal networks have three main functions: spatially organizing the cell contents, connecting the cell physically and biochemically to its external environment, and generating coordinated forces that enable the cell to move and change shape (Fletcher and Mullins 2010).”
Actin dynamics, architecture, and mechanics in cell motility. (2014, background): “studies concerning the mechanical properties and force generation of branched networks, no clear consensus has emerged relating the detailed actin structure to how good the actin network is at moving an object (3, 4, 20, 87, 195, 257, 338).”