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At the cellular level, physical stress is ever-present and inescapable. Whether externally applied, as when bodies move, bend, and stretch, or internally generated by the cytoskeleton as cells change position, mechanical forces trigger changes in intracellular biochemical signaling and gene expression, influencing processes such as migration, proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. For instance, stem cells have been shown to differentiate into different cell types depending on the stiffness of the matrix on which they are grown.
Force is increasingly recognized to play a vital role in regulating cell behavior and function, and researchers are beginning to elucidate the mechanisms by which cells sense and generate mechanical forces and translate them into biochemical signals—a process known as mechanotransduction. In the past few years, a number of techniques ...
