WIKIMEDIA, KAIBARA87Stem cells grown on hard or soft substrates seem to note the difference, and memory of their past environments can influence their later fates. Researchers demonstrate today (March 16) in Nature Materials that human mesenchymal stem cells grown on a rigid substrate for some time become biased toward differentiating into a bone-cell lineage, whereas cells grown on softer surfaces are just as likely to eventually follow a bone- or fat-cell fate.
Key to these experiments was a phototunable hydrogel that allowed the researchers to alter the stiffness of the substrate simply by shining a light. “The report is a really great illustration of the potential to use materials as tools to understand how stem cells work,” said Matthew Dalby, a bone cell engineering researcher at the University of Glasgow who was not involved in the study.
Earlier work has shown that stem cells respond to their physical environments, and studies have implicated the transcriptional coactivators YAP and TAZ in transducing this mechanical information from the environment to the cell. For the present study, Kristi Anseth at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and her colleagues examined whether stem ...
