TL;DR
A custom biaxial bioreactor is used to subject collagen gels seeded with primary aortic smooth muscle cells to different biaxial loading conditions, consistent with a load-mediated homeostatic response by vascular smooth muscle cells.
Tissues are composites of living cells and extracellular matrix (ECM), that jointly determine their unique mechanical behavior. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that contractile cells remodel the ECM by generating long-range bands of aligned and densified fibers that mechanically couple cells into multicellular clus...
Cells in connective tissues reside within the extracellular matrix (ECM), which consists of a fibrous mesh that exhibits non-linear strain-stiffening behavior, driven by a transition from bending-to-stretching-dominated deformation. While bulk rheology captures macroscopic mechanical properties, cells actively sense an...
The material properties of connective tissues are often considered to be dominated by the extracellular matrix. However, cells within tissues contribute significantly to the mechanics, particularly when considering volume-changing deformations such as axial compression. Recent studies have considered the compression re...
Fascia forms a continuous connective tissue network throughout the body and is persistently subjected to complex mechanical loading, including stretching, compression, shear and torsion during daily activity. Growing evidence suggests that fascia is not merely a passive mechanical linkage for force transmission but may...
Focal adhesion (FA) dynamics and cell migration depend sensitively on the mechanical properties of the extracellular matrix, yet substrate stiffness alone cannot account for the distinct behaviours observed on natural versus artificial materials. In this review, we synthesize experimental findings on cells interacting...
The mechanical properties of network-based materials have been extensively studied under qui- escent conditions, yet their self-assembly in nature occurs mainly in a mechanically stressed envi- ronment. Here, we show that the stiffness of collagen networks, one of the main building blocks of the mammalian extracellular...
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