Measuring the tension of a cell with a molecule
The volume of cells can vary dramatically. Similarly to an inflating balloon, the volume increase of growing cells pushes on the plasma membrane—the lipid envelope that surrounds the cell. This "turgor" pressure increases the tension of the membrane, which, if left uncorrected, will ultimately cause the cell to burst. To prevent this from happening, cells have evolved mechanisms to monitor the tension of their plasma membrane. When tension is too high, cells respond by increasing the amount of lipid in the membrane. Conversely, when tension is too low, cells remove lipid from the membrane to "tighten" it. How cells manage to sense tension and trigger the appropriate biological response has remained a mystery. It has been difficult to solve due to a lack of tools to study membrane tension within living cells. To tackle this problem, researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the National Centre for Competence in...