News and Opinion

Gallery | A human breast cancer cell immediately shifts its shape at high viscosity

Published
Go to the profile of Yun Chen
Yun Chen
Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University
Like

Read the paper

Nature
Nature Nature

Membrane ruffling is a mechanosensor of extracellular fluid viscosity - Nature Physics

Living cells change their behaviour in response to the viscosity of the medium surrounding them. An in vitro study shows that cells spread wider and move faster in a highly viscous medium, provided they have an actively ruffling lamellipodium.

Upon viscosity increase, from water-like to honey-like viscous drag will immediately redistribute the membrane originally stored in the ruffles, resulting in a 2-fold increase of spread area, formation of more focal adhesions, generating greater traction forces, and twice faster cell migration. See more details at this link.

Go to the profile of Yun Chen
Yun Chen
Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University

Please sign in or register for FREE

If you are a registered user on Research Communities by Springer Nature, please sign in

Sign In Register

Cookies

We use cookies to ensure the functionality of our website, to personalize content and advertising, to provide social media features, and to analyze our traffic. If you allow us to do so, we also inform our social media, advertising and analysis partners about your use of our website. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to deny or allow. Please note that based on your settings not all functionalities of the site are available.

Further information can be found in our privacy policy.