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Updated: Apr 11, 2026

Protrusion Force Microscopy: A Method to Quantify Forces Developed by Cell Protrusions
Published on: June 16, 2018
Traction microscopy to identify force modulation in subresolution adhesions
Sangyoon J Han1, Youbean Oak2, Alex Groisman3
11] Department of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. [2] Department of Cell Biology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA.
Abstract:
We present a reconstruction algorithm that resolves cellular tractions in diffraction-limited nascent adhesions (NAs). The enabling method is the introduction of sparsity regularization to the solution of the inverse problem, which suppresses noise without underestimating traction magnitude. We show that NAs transmit a distinguishable amount of traction and that NA maturation depends on traction growth rate. A software package implementing this numerical approach is provided.
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