Recent Advances in Experimental Methods of Cellular Force Sensing

Perturbing Endothelial Biomechanics via Connexin 43 Structural Disruption

“…A few useful techniques that have been utilized in mechanobiology are monolayer stress microscopy and traction force microscopy. Traction force microscopy allows for the computation of tractions generated at the cell-substrate interface, while monolayer stress microscopy allows for the computation of intercellular stresses generated between adjacent cells within a monolayer [2][3][4][5][6] . Results yielded from previous methods have suggested that cell-derived mechanical stresses play a crucial role in determining the fate of a host of cellular processes [3][4][5] .…”

“…These principal stresses are subsequently used to compute the 2D average normal intercellular stress [ (σ max + σ min ) /2] and 2D maximum shear intercellular stress [(σ max -σ min ) /2] within the entire monolayer 12,13 . This procedure is described in more detail by Tambe et al 12,13 Monolayer stress microscopy (MSM) allows for the calculation of cell-cell intercellular stresses generated within a monolayer [6][7][8]12,13 . These intercellular stresses have been suggested to be important for tissue growth and repair, wound healing, and cancer metastasis 12,[15][16][17] .…”