Abstract
Adherent cells use forces at the cell-substrate interface to sense and respond to the physical properties of their environment. These cell forces can be measured with traction force microscopy which inverts the equations of elasticity theory to calculate them from the deformations of soft polymer substrates. We introduce a new type of traction force microscopy that in contrast to traditional methods uses additional image data for cytoskeleton and adhesion structures and a biophysical model to improve the robustness of the inverse procedure and abolishes the need for regularization. We use this method to demonstrate that ventral stress fibers of U2OS-cells are typically under higher mechanical tension than dorsal stress fibers or transverse arcs.
Highlights
Adherent cells continuously probe the mechanical properties of their environment by exerting forces through integrin-based sites of adhesions [1,2]
A commonly used method to measure cell forces during essential biological processes is traction force microscopy, which uses the deformations of a soft elastic substrate to calculate cell forces
The standard setup for traction force microscopy suffers from mathematical limitations in calculating forces from displacements
Summary
Adherent cells continuously probe the mechanical properties of their environment by exerting forces through integrin-based sites of adhesions (focal adhesions, FAs) [1,2]. These cellular forces are mainly generated by myosin II motors that interact with different types of actin networks and bundles [3,4]. The system built of FAs, SFs and actin networks regulates cell shape and the distribution of stresses on the substrate, thereby mediating the mechanical interactions of the cell with the extracellular environment [1,3,7]. It is essential to develop methods to measure cellular forces and to associate them with individual components of this system in order to understand how cells precisely control force generation
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