ArticleCommunications biology2022
Epithelial cells sacrifice excess area to preserve fluidity in response to external mechanical stress.
Article in Communications biology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Shape-independent fluidity in epithelial cell monolayers.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Identification of pulmonary hypertension with pulmonary vascular surface volume ratio by non-contrast CT.BMC cardiovascular disorders · 2026Article
- Cell loss disrupts mechanical homeostasis to drive retinal pigment epithelium ageing-like phenotype in vitro.Nature communications · 2026Article
- A biohybrid system to reconstruct epithelial morphomechanicsMaterials today. Bio · 2026Article
- Shape, Strain, and Stability: Epithelia Under High Strain.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- High-Throughput Nanorheology of Living Cells Powered by Supervised Machine Learning.Advanced intelligent systems (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2025Article
- Membrane-Bound Vimentin Filaments Reorganize and Elongate under Strain.Biomacromolecules · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
Viscoelastic properties of epithelial cells subject to shape changes were monitored by indentation-retraction/relaxation experiments. MDCK II cells cultured on extensible polydimethylsiloxane substrates were laterally stretched and, in response, displayed increased cortex contractility and loss of excess surface area. Thereby, the cells preserve their fluidity but inevitably become stiffer. We found similar behavior in demixed cell monolayers of ZO-1/2 double knock down (dKD) cells, cells exposed to different temperatures and after removal of cholesterol from the plasma membrane. Conversely, the mechanical response of single cells adhered onto differently sized patches displays no visible rheological change. Sacrificing excess surface area allows the cells to respond to mechanical challenges without losing their ability to flow. They gain a new degree of freedom that permits resolving the interdependence of fluidity β on stiffness [Formula: see text]. We also propose a model that permits to tell apart contributions from excess membrane area and excess cell surface area.
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