Protein Cell DOI 10.1007/s13238-014-0057-9 Protein & Cell REVIEW Mechanomics: an emerging field between biology and biomechanics Jiawen Wang, Dongyuan Lü, Debin Mao, Mian Long& Center for Biomechanics and Bioengineering and Key Laboratory of Microgravity, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China & Correspondence:
[email protected] (M. Long) Received January 6, 2014 Accepted March 10, 2014 Cell ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION & Cells sense various in vivo mechanical stimuli, which Mechanical stimuli are crucial to many biological processes at initiate downstream signaling to mechanical forces. organ, tissue, cell, and molecule levels. Shear flow, tensile While a body of evidences is presented on the impact of stretch, and mechanical compression are most typical in vivo limited mechanical regulators in past decades, the mechanical stimuli, which are in action alone or synergistically mechanisms how biomechanical responses globally with other mechanical and even biochemical factors (Wang, Protein affect cell function need to be addressed. Complexity 2006; Cohen and Chen, 2008). For example, endothelial cells and diversity of in vivo mechanical clues present dis- are subjected to blood shear flow and orientated towards the tinct patterns of shear flow, tensile stretch, or mechan- flow direction (Silkworth and Stehbens, 1975), extracellular ical compression with various parametric combination matrices (ECMs) are stretched to mediate the outside-in sig- of its magnitude, duration, or frequency. Thus, it is naling (Wright et al., 1997), and cartilage tissue is compressed required to understand, from the viewpoint of me- to initiate interstitial fluid pressurization (Soltz and Ateshian, chanobiology, what mechanical features of cells are, 2000). A body of cues is known about how these mechanical why mechanical properties are different among distinct stimuli affect cell morphology, proliferation, and differentiation.