Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Roca-Cusachs, Pere
• Conte, Vito
• Trepat, Xavier

Titel

Quantifying forces in cell biology

Ist Teil von

• Nature cell biology, 2017-07, Vol.19 (7), p.742

Ort / Verlag

England

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Link zum Volltext

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Cells exert, sense, and respond to physical forces through an astounding diversity of mechanisms. Here we review recently developed tools to quantify the forces generated by cells. We first review technologies based on sensors of known or assumed mechanical properties, and discuss their applicability and limitations. We then proceed to draw an analogy between these human-made sensors and force sensing in the cell. As mechanics is increasingly revealed to play a fundamental role in cell function we envisage that tools to quantify physical forces may soon become widely applied in life-sciences laboratories.