traction-force-microscopy-to-study-b-lymphocyte-activation

Traction Force Microscopy to Study B Lymphocyte Activation

Traction force microscopy (TFM) enables the measurement of forces produced by a cell on a substrate. This technique infers traction force measurements ...

Université Joseph Fourier (Grenoble 1)

Mechanical interactions between cells and their microenvironment are crucial for fundamental biological processes ranging from migration to differentiation. This has led, over the last decades, to the development of new ways to culture cells. Living cells are now grown not only on glass coverslips, where they completely lose the mechanical and geometrical constraints coming from their microenvironment, but also on soft patterned substrates that mimic the rigidity and spatial information of their in vivo niches. Microfabrication processes have thus logically emerged has new tools to create model environments to probe the behavior of biological objects. Here, we present a method for fast and robust protein micropattern transfer onto polyacrylamide hydrogels that can be used for traction force microscopy. The technique relies on the elaboration of glass templates bearing patterned polymer brushes, which can be re-employed several times for the production of patterned gels without the need to repeat the critical microfabrication steps.

Fast and robust fabrication of reusable molds for hydrogel micro-patterning.

Since the emergence of mechanobiology, mechanical signals have been shown to influence almost every process in biology. Cells transduce mechanical signals into biochemical signaling pathways, adjust their behavior and/or phenotype before transmitting these signals to neighboring cells. Mechanical signals thus appear as information, which can be "written" by cells in the surrounding extracellular matrix, "transmitted" through it and "read" by other cells. This brief review summarizes our current understanding of the mechanisms regulating the tensional state of cells and tissues subjected to mechanical perturbations, prior to examining existing or potential experimental approaches to study these mechanisms.

Article	Year
Fast and robust fabrication of reusable molds for hydrogel micro-patterning. Biomaterials science\| PubMed ID: 27709128	2016
On the spatiotemporal regulation of cell tensional state. Experimental cell research\| PubMed ID: 30794802	2019

Martial Balland

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