Monday, May 16, 2016, 1:30 pm — Bldg 735, Conference Room A, 1st Floor
A living cell is a complex soft matter system that is far from equilibrium. While its components have definite mechanical properties like stiffness and viscosity, cells consume energy to generate force and exhibit adaptation by modulating their mechanical properties through regulatory pathways. In this work, we explore cell mechanics by stretching single fibroblast cells and simultaneously measuring their traction stresses. We show that a minimal active linear viscoelastic model captures essential features of cell response, especially during early times shortly after stretch. On longer time scales, cells often exhibit an adaptive response to stretch that contradicts the minimal mechanical model. We find that while molecular perturbations of myosin and vinculin change quiescent traction stresses, surprisingly they have no significant impact on the stiffness or viscoelastic timescale of the cell response.
Hosted by: Oleg Gang
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