The Role of Mechanotransduction in Cellular Biology
A special issue of Biomolecules (ISSN 2218-273X). This special issue belongs to the section "Cellular Biochemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2025 | Viewed by 1595
Special Issue Editor
Interests: extracellular matrix (ECM); mechanotransduction; cell membrane
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Gravity plays a central role in vertebrate development and evolution, in the tissue responses to implants, and in mechanical forces applied to cells and tissues. Extracellular matrices (ECMs) are multicomponent tissues that transduce internal and external mechanical signals into changes in tissue structure and function through a process termed mechanotransduction. Under the influence of external forces, both soft and hard vertebrate tissues exhibit internal tensile forces that serve to preserve a synthetic phenotype in the resident cell population. This involves signals that affect the cell membrane, cytosol, nuclear membrane, and cell nucleus, affecting local cells as well as cells in neighboring tissues. The application of external forces alters the balance between the external gravitational force and internal forces acting on resident cells, leading to changes in the expression of genes and production of proteins that may ultimately alter the exact structure and function of the ECM.
Mechanotransduction is thought to involve several different macromolecular components and processes, including direct stretching of the protein–cell surface integrin binding sites that occur on all eukaryotic cells (integrin-dependent mechanisms), growth factor and hormone receptors, and deformation of cell membrane and cell junctions, ion channel stretch receptors. Once activated, these channels activate secondary messengers through pathways such as those involved in integrin-dependent activation, MAPK, Wint, Hedgehog, and other pathways that enable cell-to-cell communication between cells with similar and different phenotypes. Mechanical forces have been shown to alter cell membrane ion channel permeability associated with Ca+2 and other ion fluxes and the activation of growth factor and hormone receptors even in the absence of ligand binding. Changes in mechanotransduction have been associated with cancer and other diseases and have been treated with drugs that block certain pathways.
The purpose of this Special Issue is to attempt to examine the complex relationships between the effects of mechanical forces on cell membranes, the cell cytoplasm, nuclear events, and cell–cell communication that are associated with mechanotransduction and changes that occur in disease.
Dr. Frederick H. Silver
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- cell membrane
- cytosol
- nuclear membrane
- integrin
- mechanotransduction
- map kinase pathway
- ERKs
- JNKs
- p38/SAPKs
- YAP/TAZ
- Hippo pathway
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