ArticleBiophysical journal2004
Substrate compliance versus ligand density in cell on gel responses.
Article in Biophysical journal, 2004. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 438 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
438 citing papers in PubMed, 1,145 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Osteogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells in cell-laden culture of self-assembling peptide hydrogels.OpenNano · 2025Article
- Substrate stiffness modulates collective colony expansion of the social bacteriumAPL bioengineering · 2025Article
- Dynamic and Reversible Tuning of Hydrogel Viscoelasticity by Transient Polymer Interactions for Controlling Cell Adhesion.Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) · 2025Article
- Light-Intensity-Dependent Control of Collagen Hydrogel Properties via Riboflavin Phosphate-Mediated Photocrosslinking.Materials (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Forcing the code: tension modulates signaling to drive morphogenesis and malignancy.Genes & development · 2025Review
- Viscoelastic hydrogel combined with dynamic compression promotes osteogenic differentiation of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells and bone repair in rats.Regenerative biomaterials · 2025Article
- Tissue-dependent mechanosensing by cells derived from human tumors.npj biological physics and mechanics · 2025Article
- Spatial regulation of hydrogel polymerization reaction using ultrasound-driven streaming vortex.Ultrasonics sonochemistry · 2024Article
378 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Substrate stiffness is emerging as an important physical factor in the response of many cell types. In agreement with findings on other anchorage-dependent cell lineages, aortic smooth muscle cells are found to spread and organize their cytoskeleton and focal adhesions much more so on "rigid" glass or "stiff" gels than on "soft" gels. Whereas these cells generally show maximal spreading on intermediate collagen densities, the limited spreading on soft gels is surprisingly insensitive to adhesive ligand density. Bell-shaped cell spreading curves encompassing all substrates are modeled by simple functions that couple ligand density to substrate stiffness. Although smooth muscle cells spread minimally on soft gels regardless of collagen, GFP-actin gives a slight overexpression of total actin that can override the soft gel response and drive spreading; GFP and GFP-paxillin do not have the same effect. The GFP-actin cells invariably show an organized filamentous cytoskeleton and clearly indicate that the cytoskeleton is at least one structural node in a signaling network that can override spreading limits typically dictated by soft gels. Based on such results, we hypothesize a central structural role for the cytoskeleton in driving the membrane outward during spreading whereas adhesion reinforces the spreading.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.