ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2019
DNA probes that store mechanical information reveal transient piconewton forces applied by T cells.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 76 papers.
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Who cites it
76 citing papers in PubMed, 133 citations in OpenAlex.
- Antibody Fc receptor CD16a mediates natural killer cell activation via mechanotransduction of piconewton forces.Science advances · 2026Article
- SynNotch Receptors for Visualizing Immunoreceptor Force Transmission and Downstream Signaling In Vivo.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Force-Locking DNA Hairpin Probes for High-Throughput and Cumulative Detection of Intercellular Molecular Tensions.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Article
- SynNotch receptors for visualizing immunoreceptor force transmission and downstream signaling in vivo.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- A nanoscale Jitterbug transformer from DNA.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Measuring cellular force using DNA-based tension probes: from ensemble to single-molecule studies.Nature protocols · 2026Review
- Mechanical force regulates the inhibitory function of PD-1.EMBO reports · 2026Article
- Mechanoimmunology: past, present, and future perspectives.Mechanobiology in medicine · 2026Review
- Mechanotransduction through T cell receptors: consensus, controversies and future outlooks.Experimental & molecular medicine · 2026Review
- Programming DNA machines to move.Nature reviews. Chemistry · 2026Review
- Antibody Fc receptor CD16a mediates natural killer cell activation via mechanotransduction of piconewton forces.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Mechanical Signaling: Molecular Mechanisms, Biological Functions, Diseases, and Therapeutic Targets.MedComm · 2025Review
- Display of clustered antigen by follicular dendritic cells tunes B-cell receptor activation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Chimeric Antigen Receptors Transmit Co-stimulatory Domain Dependent Piconewton Forces to their Target.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Mechano-ID: Proximity Labeling of Mechanically Active Receptors Reveals the Mechanome and Tags Mechanically Active Cells.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2025Article
- DNA Origami Tension Sensors (DOTS) for Single-Molecule Force Measurements at Fluid Intermembrane Junctions.Nano letters · 2025Article
- Three-dimensional traction technology and its application in mechanomedicine.Mechanobiology in medicine · 2025Review
- CD4+T-cells create a stable mechanical environment for force-sensitive TCR:pMHC interactions.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Mechanical interactions impact the functions of immune cells and their application in immunoengineering.Advanced therapeutics · 2025Article
- Decoding force-transmission linkages for therapeutic targeting and engineering.APL bioengineering · 2025Review
16 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The advent of molecular tension probes for real-time mapping of piconewton forces in living systems has had a major impact on mechanobiology. For example, DNA-based tension probes have revealed roles for mechanics in platelet, B cell, T cell, and fibroblast function. Nonetheless, imaging short-lived forces transmitted by low-abundance receptors remains a challenge. This is a particular problem for mechanoimmunology where ligand-receptor bindings are short lived, and a few antigens are sufficient for cell triggering. Herein, we present a mechanoselection strategy that uses locking oligonucleotides to preferentially and irreversibly bind DNA probes that are mechanically strained over probes at rest. Thus, infrequent and short-lived mechanical events are tagged. This strategy allows for integration and storage of mechanical information into a map of molecular tension history. Upon addition of unlocking oligonucleotides that drive toehold-mediated strand displacement, the probes reset to the real-time state, thereby erasing stored mechanical information. As a proof of concept, we applied this strategy to study OT-1 T cells, revealing that the T cell receptor (TCR) mechanically samples antigens carrying single amino acid mutations. Such events are not detectable using conventional tension probes. Each mutant peptide ligand displayed a different level of mechanical sampling and spatial scanning by the TCR that strongly correlated with its functional potency. Finally, we show evidence that T cells transmit pN forces through the programmed cell death receptor-1 (PD1), a major target in cancer immunotherapy. We anticipate that mechanical information storage will be broadly useful in studying the mechanobiology of the immune system.
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