Regensburg 2022 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 19: Cell Mechanics 2
BP 19.3: Vortrag
Mittwoch, 7. September 2022, 15:30–15:45, H16
Exploiting nonlinear elasticity for robust mechanosensation in disordered fiber networks — Estelle Berthier1, •Pierre Ronceray2, and Chase Broedersz1,3 — 1Arnold-Sommerfeld-Center for Theoretical Physics and Center for NanoScience, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany — 2Centre Turing and Centre de Physique Théorique, Université Aix-Marseille, France — 3Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
Cell behavior is steered by guiding cues from their surrounding extracellular environment. Cells anchor to the extracellular matrix (ECM) and perform mechanosensation: they probe their surrounding's mechanical response and regulate their behavior according to the stiffness they sense. Yet, the robustness of cellular mechanosensing is physically limited by the ECM intrinsic disorder and complex mechanical response of both the network and its constituents. Thus, it remains what strategies cells employ to accurately interpret mechanical guiding cues of such a heterogeneous environment.
Using a theoretical framework for disordered fiber networks, we evaluate the mechanical information cell can obtain by performing local measurements. We show that the signal-to-noise ratio of stiffness measurements increases dramatically in the nonlinear regime: the measurements become insensitive to local structural fluctuations of the network. We provide a scaling argument supporting that the local measurement effectively behaves as a sensory device of larger size.