CELL SCAFFOLDING: This composite super-resolution microscopy image shows actin (on a scale from blue to magenta/red, for earlier to later time points of imaging) in a living pig kidney cell.© TALLEY LAMBERT/SCIENCE SOURCE
It is well known that some human diseases are related to changes in mechanical properties of tissues. In patients suffering from arteriosclerosis, the arteries lose some of their elasticity and become thicker and stiffer. In liver or lung fibrosis, excessive fibrous connective tissue has a similar hardening effect on those organs. And patients with aneurysms have balloon-like bulges in their blood vessels that, if left untreated, can expand under pressure until they burst.
Of course, mechanical properties and forces aren’t just important in disease, but in health as well. Almost all living cells and tissues exert and experience physical forces that influence biological function. The magnitudes of those forces vary among different cell and tissue types, as do cells’ sensitivities to changes in magnitudes, frequencies, ...
