Guest Editorial Advancing Mechanobiology by Micro/Nanosystems

Abstract

The eight papers in this special section examine the field of mechanobiology. The capabilities of living cells to sense and respond to biomechanical cues in the native microenvironment play critical roles in various physiological and pathological processes. A century ago, the observations of cell shape changes and tissue deformation during embryo development allured developmental biologists to believe that mechanical forces dictate morphogenesis, while these thoughts were then masked by the huge success of genetics. The recent two decades witness the resurgence of mechanobiology research, thanks to the close collaborations between biologists, material scientists, and bioengineers. The papers in this section present exciting contributions to the mechanobiology field; efforts spanning a broad range of domains including cellular responses to bionanomaterials, and computational modeling of cell behaviors.