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Updated: Aug 10, 2026

Live Cell Response to Mechanical Stimulation Studied by Integrated Optical and Atomic Force Microscopy
Published on: October 5, 2010
Cell mechanosensitivity controls the anisotropy of focal adhesions
Alice Nicolas1, Benjamin Geiger, Samuel A Safran
1Department of Materials and Interfaces, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
Abstract:
Cellular adhesions are modulated by cytoskeletal forces or external stresses and adapt to the mechanical properties of the extracellular matrix. We propose that this mechanosensitivity can be driven at least in part by the elastic, cell-contractility-induced deformations of protein molecules that form the adhesion. The model accounts for observations of anisotropic growth and shrinkage of focal adhesions in the direction of the force and predicts that focal adhesions only grow within a range of force that is determined by the composition and matrix properties. This prediction is consistent with the observations of a force threshold for the appearance of elongated focal adhesions and the disruption of adhesions into fibrils on a mobile extracellular matrix. The growth dynamics is calculated and the predicted sliding of focal adhesions is consistent with several experiments.
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