Room to move: Tissue growth controlled by cell cycle response to spatial and mechanical constraints
(Phys.org) —One of the most important factors in tissue formation is the control of cell proliferation. While the fact that cells undergo a range of spatial and mechanical constraints, the ways the resulting mechanical feedback may affect cell cycle progression – and thus tissue cell proliferation pattern – has not been fully understood. Recently, however, scientists at University of California, Santa Barbara, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany, and Stanford University studied a mammalian model epithelium's response to experimentally applied forces, finding a mechanosensitive checkpoint that controls cell cycle progression in response to spatial constraints. The study also showed that stretching the tissue results in fast cell cycle reactivation, whereas compression rapidly leads to cell cycle arrest – with cells having no memory of past constraints. This allowed them to develop a biophysical model that predicts tissue growth in response to environment changes in spatial constraints. The researchers say their...