Guest Editors
Massimo Vassalli
University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
<p>Dr. Massimo Vassalli is a Reader within the James Watt School of Engineering of the University of Glasgow and PI at the Centre for the Cellular Microenvironment (CeMi). He earned a PhD on “Non-Linear dynamics and Complex Systems” from the University of Florence (Italy) and afterwards he entered a career in biophysics, developing advanced methods to study mechanical properties of biological molecules and living cells. Currently he is interested in the process of mechanotransduction, the mechanisms by which cells respond to the physical cues of the environment to establish their physiological or pathological phenotype. Over the last 15 years, Dr. Massimo Vassalli has authored more than 100 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, he has been Endeavour Fellow at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney (Australia), and visiting scientist at several international institutions including ETH Zurich (Switzerland) and the University of Nice (France). </p>
Mariana Azevedo Gonzalez Oliva
University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
<p>Mariana Azevedo Gonzalez Oliva is currently a PhD student within the Centre for the Cellular Microenvironment (CeMi) at the University of Glasgow. Her interests lie in mechanobiology as a new therapeutic target for tissue health. </p> <p>She graduated with a BSc Hons in Pharmacology from the University of Glasgow in June 2018 with a thesis on cell membrane receptors as potential targets for neuropsychiatric disease, under the supervision of Prof. Andrew Tobin. After this, she continued her education at the University of Glasgow with a Master of Science (MSci) in Stratified Medicine and Pharmacological Innovation, where she worked within the CeMi, exploiting hydrogels and their potential for promoting neural tissue regeneration under the supervision of Prof. Manuel Salmerón Sanchez. Since then, she has continued this work and stayed to pursue a PhD in the same lab, where she now investigates the role of a mechanosensitive membrane protein in relaying the cell’s mechanical environment to the cell nucleus.</p>
Giuseppe Ciccone
University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
<p>Giuseppe Ciccone is a PhD student working with Dr. Massimo Vassalli in the field of mechanobiology within the Centre for the Cellular Microenvironment (CeMi) at the University of Glasgow. His interests include cell and soft materials’ mechanical properties, and experimental tools to quantify them. </p> <p>He graduated with a BEng in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Glasgow in June 2019, with a thesis on the mechanical properties of hydrogels for tissue engineering, which was awarded the prize for best materials-related final year project and whose results have been published in the peer-reviewed journal <em>Advanced Healthcare Materials.</em></p> <p>After this, he decided to pursue a Master of Research (MRes) in Bioengineering at Imperial College London, where he worked in Prof. Darryl Overby’s Ocular Biomechanics lab on Brillouin spectroscopy of soft tissue-model hydrogels. In October 2020, he moved back to the University of Glasgow to pursue his PhD under the supervision of Dr Massimo Vassalli, where he is currently working on new methods to measure single cell mechanical forces and mechanical properties.</p>
Collection Overview
Cells continuously exert physical forces on their surrounding environment and simultaneously perceive and sustain the environment’s mechanical dynamics. This determines both cell and tissue mechanical properties and is reflected in physiological processes such as blood flow or muscle contraction, as well as in diseases such as cancer, where cell and microenvironment mechanics are notoriously altered.
Deepening our understanding of this bidirectional crosstalk requires new tools to apply, measure, and control cellular and microenvironmental mechanical properties, forces, and cellular mechanosensitivity. In this methods collection, we will collate novel approaches that have emerged within the field of mechanobiology and are ready to be standardised based on available reproducible commercial components. These will include techniques to quantify mechanical properties, including Brillouin spectroscopy, acoustic force spectroscopy for cell mechanics, and microfluidic technology for single cell mechanics. The collection will also include tools for quantifying cellular mechanosensation, such as high-specificity reporter dyes, specifically Ca2+ based mechanosensitivity assays and cellular and molecular force sensors, as well as high-throughput YAP/TAZ translocation assays.
We believe that this selection of complementary methods is central to highlight the crosstalk between mechanics and mechanosensitivity, and the importance of considering a variety of new approaches to delve into the future of mechanobiology.
Articles
Integrative Toolkit to Analyze Cellular Signals: Forces, Motion, Morphology, and Fluorescence
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Cited by 7
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2022
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Alyson Nguyen*1, Keith Battle*2,3, Sunita S. Paudel*2,3, Ningyong Xu2, Jessica Bell3, Linn Ayers3, Cassandra Chapman4, Ajay P. Singh5, Srinivas Palanki6, Thomas Rich3,7, Diego F. Alvarez8, Troy Stevens2,3, Dhananjay T. Tambe3,4,7
1Biomedical Sciences, Pat Capps Covey College of Allied Health Professions, University of South Alabama, 2Department of Physiology and Cell Biology, College of Medicine, University of South Alabama, 3Center for Lung Biology, College of Medicine, University of South Alabama, 4William B. Burnsed Jr. Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, University of South Alabama, 5Mitchell Cancer Institute, College of Medicine, University of South Alabama, 6Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, West Virginia University, 7Department of Pharmacology, College of Medicine, University of South Alabama, 8Department of Physiology & Pharmacology, College of Osteopathic Medicine, Sam Houston State University
Control of Cell Adhesion using Hydrogel Patterning Techniques for Applications in Traction Force Microscopy
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Cited by 2
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2022
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Quantitative Analysis of Viscoelastic Properties of Red Blood Cells Using Optical Tweezers and Defocusing Microscopy
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Cited by 2
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2022
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Lucas Barreto*1,2, Fran Gomez*1,2, Pedro S. Lourenço1,2, Douglas G. Freitas1,2, Juliana Soares1,3, Clemilson Berto-Junior4,5, Ubirajara Agero6, Nathan B. Viana1,2, Bruno Pontes1,2,3,7
1Centro Nacional de Biologia Estrutural e Bioimagem - CENABIO, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 2Instituto de Física, Programa de Pós-graduação Multidisciplinar em Física Aplicada, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 3Instituto de Biofísica Carlos Chagas Filho, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências Biológicas Biofísica, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 4Faculdade de Farmácia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro - Campus Macaé, 5Faculdade de Medicina, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Endocrinologia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 6Instituto de Ciências Exatas, Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 7Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Fluorescence Biomembrane Force Probe: Concurrent Quantitation of Receptor-ligand Kinetics and Binding-induced Intracellular Signaling on a Single Cell
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Cited by 54
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2015
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1Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 3Charles Perkins Centre, The University of Sydney, 4Institute of Biophysics, Laboratory of RNA Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 5University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 6School of Medicine and Collaborative Innovation Center for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, Zhejiang University
Combining 3D Magnetic Force Actuator and Multi-Functional Fluorescence Imaging to Study Nucleus Mechanobiology
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Cited by 5
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2022
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Miao Huang1,5, Heyang Wang1,5, Alfredo A. Delgado1, Tyler A. Reid1, Julian Long2, Shu Wang3,5, Hayley Sussman4, Juan Guan5,6,7, Hitomi Yamaguchi1, Xin Tang1,5,8,9
1Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, University of Florida, 2Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Florida, 3Department of Biostatistics, University of Florida, 4Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering (COE), University of Delaware (UD), 5UF Health Cancer Center, University of Florida, 6Department of Physics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Florida, 7Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, College of Medicine, University of Florida, 8J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida, 9Department of Physiology and Functional Genomics, University of Florida
Abstracts
Mechanical mapping of living cells using photothermal off-resonance Atomic Force Microscopy
Camilla Romagnoli*1,
Matthew Walker1,
Giuseppe Ciccone1,
Mariana Azevedo Gonzalez Oliva1,
Christian Bippes2,
Massimo Vassalli*1
1Centre for the Cellular Microenvironment, Advanced Research Centre, University of Glasgow,
2Nanosurf AG, Gräubernstrasse 12-14, 4410 Liestal, Switzerland