Microenvironment promotes cytoskeleton remodeling and adaptive phenotypic transition

Abstract

The cytoskeleton includes three main classes of networked filaments behaving as a coherent and complex structure that confers stability to cell shape while serving as sensor of internal/extracellular changes.Microenvironmental stimuli interfere with the non-linear dynamics that govern cytoskeleton architecture, namely by fostering symmetry breakings and transitions across different phenotypic states. Such process induces a wholecoherent adaptive response, involving the reprogramming of biochemical and gene-expression patterns. These characteristics are especially relevant during development, and in those conditions in which a deregulated crosstalk between cells and the stroma is at the core of the pathological process. Therefore, studying how the cytoskeleton can be modified-both pharmacologically and/or through microenvironment-dependent changes-has become a major area of interest in cancer and developmental biology.

Space Biomedicine: A Unique Opportunity to Rethink the Relationships between Physics and Biology

“…Cytoskeleton proteins indeed behave as a true dissipative system, and the CSK architecture can “capture” and further amplify even minor changes occurring in the field of forces, precisely because the non-equilibrium dynamics governs CSK activity and conformation. Ultimately, this mechanism allows cells to display emergent properties, long-range correlations, and dramatic first-order class transitions, which play a pivotal function in a number of relevant biological processes including proliferation, differentiation, embryo-, and morphogenesis [ 89 ]. Consequently, non-equilibrium thermodynamics can significantly impair the overall mechanomics of the system, thus contributing further to the changes observed in all of the conditions in which the living system undergoes a critical transition.…”