Active Prestress Leads to an Apparent Stiffening of Cells through Geometrical Effects.

ABSTRACT: Tuning of active prestress, e.g., through activity of molecular motors, constitutes a powerful cellular tool to adjust cellular stiffness through nonlinear material properties. Understanding this tool is an important prerequisite for our comprehension of cellular force response, cell shape dynamics, and tissue organization. Experimental data obtained from cell-mechanical measurements often show a simple linear dependence between mechanical prestress and measured differential elastic moduli. Although these experimental findings could point to stress-induced structural changes in the material, we propose a surprisingly simple alternative explanation in a theoretical study. We show how geometrical effects can give rise to increased cellular force response of cells in the presence of active pr

SUBMITTER: Fischer-Friedrich E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5984997 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature