Cellular mechanics is a fundamental determinant of cell and tissue patterning. Numerous cellular processes including cell migration, division, differentiation and programmed cell death are influenced by the mechanical property of cells. These cellular processes must be regulated with high precision from the molecular to multicellular level. Thus, ensuring that each cell is able to undergo its designated fate, based on external cues and internal machinery. Indeed, individual cells within tissues constantly sense their neighbours and matrix by transmission of mechanochemical signals to coordinate these cellular processes. Of note, misregulation of these mechanochemical signals can lead to pathological consequences such as cancer, suppressed immunity and neurodegenerative diseases.
Recent advances in the regulation of cellular mechanics have profoundly impacted our understanding of tissue morphogenesis. For example, variation in the mechanical properties of the extracellular matrix leads to different types of collective cell migration that determines tissue patterning. Moreover, mechanochemical signaling pathways can control both cellular dynamics (at a short timescale) and gene expression (at longer time scales), whose co-regulation is critical for the self-organization of cells into tissues.
We welcome biologists, physicists, and mathematician to contribute to this issue. In this research topic, we seek out for commentaries, reviews and original research articles that provide interesting insights or new biological observations including but not limited to the following areas.
- Mechanobiology at the molecular/cellular/tissue scale, employing experimental/modeling/theoretical approaches.
- Quantitative analysis of cellular mechanics (single cell and tissue level)
- Biochemical and physical properties of cellular structures that generate and/or transmit force.
- Mechanochemical signaling and feedback loops that control cellular metabolism and gene expression.
- Mechanobiology of cell-cell and cell-ECM interactions
- Mechanotransduction in cell division, migration, tissue homeostasis, immune defense, stem cell fate specification/differentiation, tissue patterning and cell extrusion.
- Mechanobiology of molecular, cellular and developmental processes related to cancer, neurodegeneration, inflammatory diseases.
- Mechanobiology of cellular pathologies such as centrosome amplification, whole genome doubling, nuclear envelope abnormalities, oncogenic transformation and senescence.
Please note that there is currently a ?second, follow-up volume online Forces in Biology - Cell and Developmental Mechanobiology and Its Implications in Disease - Volume II