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Mechanical force drives the polarization and orientation of cells

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Abstract

Collective cell groups are organized to form specific patterns that play an important role in various physiological and pathological processes, such as tissue morphogenesis, wound healing, and cancer invasion. Compared to the behavior of single cells, which has been studied intensively from many aspects (cell migration, adhesion, polarization, proliferation, etc.) and at various scales (molecular, subcellular, and cellular), the behavior of multiple cells is less well understood, particularly from a quantitative perspective. In this paper, we present our recent studies of collective polarization and orientation of multiple cells through both experimental measurement and theoretical modeling, including cell behavior on/in 2D and 3D substrate/tissue. We find that collective cell behavior, including polarization, alignment, and migration, is closely related to local stress states in cell layers or tissue, which demonstrates the crucial role of mechanical forces in living organisms. Specifically, cells demonstrate preferential polarization and alignment along the maximum principal stress in the cell layer, and the cell aspect ratio increases with in-plane maximum shear stress, suggesting that the maximum shear stress is the underlying driving force of cell polarization and orientation. This theory of stress-driven cell behavior of polarization and orientation provides a new perspective for understanding cell behavior in living organisms and a guideline for tissue engineering in biomedical applications.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 11772055, 11532009, 11521062, 11372042).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Engineering in Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02114, USA

    Shijie He

  2. Department of Applied Mechanics, School of Aerospace Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China

    Xiaomeng Li

  3. Department of Engineering Mechanics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Baohua Ji

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  1. Shijie He
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  2. Xiaomeng Li
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Correspondence to Baohua Ji.

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He, S., Li, X. & Ji, B. Mechanical force drives the polarization and orientation of cells. Acta Mech. Sin. 35, 275–288 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-019-00864-z

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