TFMLAB: A MATLAB toolbox for 4D traction force microscopy

Barrasa‐Fano, Jorge; Shapeti, Apeksha; Jorge-Peñas, Álvaro; Barzegari, Mojtaba; Sanz-Herrera, José A.; Oosterwyck, Hans Van

doi:10.1016/j.softx.2021.100723

Cited by 33 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Traction force microscopy was performed to investigate the exerted forces after single-cell ablation. Via TFMLab, 26 evaluation was performed using 1 μm red fluorescent beads in Cultrex BME at a dilution of 1:100 in Occludin-mEmerald positive colonoids.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Epithelial restitution in 3D - Revealing biomechanical and physiochemical dynamics in intestinal organoids via fs laser nanosurgery

Donath,

Seidler,

Mundin

et al. 2023

iScience

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We track the displacement of fluorescent beads in the basement membrane extract (BME) after single-cell ablation using confocal microscopy. Image data were analyzed using TFMLab, 26 which calculates forces in three dimensions using free-form deformation. 27 , 28 …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Epithelial restitution in 3D - Revealing biomechanical and physiochemical dynamics in intestinal organoids via fs laser nanosurgery

Donath,

Seidler,

Mundin

et al. 2023

iScience

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“…3D traction force microscopy analysis. 3D TFM data was analyzed using the TFMLAB software toolbox 63 . Briefly, bead and sprout images were filtered and enhanced.…”

Section: Quantification Of Dynamic Invasion By Cell Trackingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Force-mediated recruitment and reprogramming of healthy endothelial cells drive vascular lesion growth

Shapeti,

Barrasa-Fano,

Fattah

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Force-driven cellular interactions are known to play a critical role in cancer cell invasion, but have remained largely unexplored in the context of vascular abnormalities, partly due to a lack of suitable genetic and cellular models. One such vascular abnormality, cerebral cavernous malformation (CCM) is characterized by leaky, tumor-like vessels in the brain, where CCM mutant cells recruit wild-type cells from the surrounding endothelium to form mosaic lesions and promote lesion growth; however the mechanisms underlying this recruitment remain poorly understood. Here, we use 3D traction force microscopy in a in-vitro model of early angiogenic invasion to reveal that hyper-angiogenic CCM2-silenced endothelial cells enhance angiogenic invasion of neighboring wild-type cells through force and extracellular matrix-guided mechanisms. We show that mechanically hyperactive CCM2-silenced tips guide wild-type cells by exerting and transmitting pulling forces and by leaving degraded paths in the matrix as cues promoting invasion in a ROCKs-dependent manner. This transmission of forces is associated with a reinforcement of β1 integrin-dependent adhesive sites and actin cytoskeleton in the wild-type followers. We also show that during this process wild-type cells are reprogrammed into stalk cells through activation of matrisome and DNA replication programs, eventually leading to cell proliferation. These observations unveil a novel vascular lesion growth mechanism where CCM2 mutants hijack the function of wild-type cells to fuel CCM lesion growth. By integrating biophysical computational methodologies to quantify cellular forces with advanced molecular techniques, we provide new insights in the etiology of vascular malformations, and open up avenues to study the role of cell mechanics in tissue heterogeneity and disease progression.

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“…2. Finite element meshes were created with the Matlab toolbox TFMLAB (Barrasa-Fano et al, 2021b). Moreover, the solidity index, defined as the ratio between the cell volume and the volume of its convex hull, is used as an indicator of cell morphology complexity.…”

Section: Cell Morphologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The literature offers a vast number of approaches combining the previous two factors differently. 3D traction forces have been calculated in PEG hydrogels using linear elastic models and under a small strain elasticity theory for single cells (Legant et al, 2010) and for angiogenic sprouts (Barrasa-Fano et al, 2021a,b). Collagen hydrogels have been modeled as a linear elastic material (Du et al, 2018; Gjorevski et al, 2015) as well as a hyperelastic material such as Neo-Hookean (Hervas-Raluy et al, 2021; Sanz-Herrera et al, 2021; Song et al, 2020b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Traction force reconstruction assessment on real three-dimensional matrices and cellular morphologies

Apolinar-Fernández¹,

Barrasa‐Fano

Cóndor

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Traction force microscopy (TFM) allows to estimate tractions on the surface of cells when they mechanically interact with hydrogel substrates that mimic the extracellular matrix (ECM). The field of mechanobiology has a strong interest in using TFM in 3D in vitro models. However, there are a number of challenges that hamper the accuracy of 3D TFM and that are often bypassed. In this study, the computational efficiency and accuracy of TFM, referred to traction reconstruction from synthetically generated (control) ground truth solutions, are assessed from four different perspectives: magnitude of cellular pulling force (and hence strain level achieved in the hydrogel), effect of the complexity of the cellular morphology, accuracy and computational efficiency of forward vs inverse traction recovery methods, and the effect of incorrectly selecting a constitutive model that describes the behavior of the ECM (i.e. linear/nonlinear). The main results showed: (i) traction reconstruction is more challenging for complex cell morphologies, (ii) there is no significant impact of the magnitude of cellular pulling force on the overall reconstruction accuracy, and (iii) modeling a nonlinear hydrogel with a linear constitutive model leads to non-negligible errors (up to 80% and 30% for forward and inverse methodologies, respectively) in traction reconstruction. This study expands the characterization of the accuracy and efficiency of 3D TFM, highlighting important factors to be considered in future 3D TFM in vitro applications.

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TFMLAB: A MATLAB toolbox for 4D traction force microscopy

Cited by 33 publications

References 29 publications

Epithelial restitution in 3D - Revealing biomechanical and physiochemical dynamics in intestinal organoids via fs laser nanosurgery

Epithelial restitution in 3D - Revealing biomechanical and physiochemical dynamics in intestinal organoids via fs laser nanosurgery

Force-mediated recruitment and reprogramming of healthy endothelial cells drive vascular lesion growth

Traction force reconstruction assessment on real three-dimensional matrices and cellular morphologies

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