Mechanobiology has been a highly recognized field in studying the importance of physical forces in physiologies at the molecular,cellular,tissue,organ and body-levels.Beside the intensive work focusing on the fine loc...Mechanobiology has been a highly recognized field in studying the importance of physical forces in physiologies at the molecular,cellular,tissue,organ and body-levels.Beside the intensive work focusing on the fine local biomechanical forces,the long-range force which can propagate through a relatively distant scale(in hundreds of micrometers and beyond)has been an intriguing topic with increasing attentions in recent years.The collective functions at cell population level often rely on cell-cell communications with or without direct contacts.Recent progresses including our own work indicate that the long-range biomechanical force propagating across scales far beyond single cell size may reserve the capability to trigger coordinative biological responses within cell population.Whether and how cells communicate mechanically in a distant manner remains largely to be explored.In respiratory system,the mechanical property of airway smooth muscle(ASM)is associated with asthma attack with prolonged contraction during airway hyper-responsiveness.In this work,we found that ASM cells rapidly self-assembled into a well-constructed network on 3D matrigel containing type I collagen(COL I),which required the collective functions and coordination of thousands of cells completed within 12-16 hours.Cells were assembled with aligned actin stress fibers and elongated nuclei.The assembling process relied on the long-range mechanical forces across the matrix to direct cell-cell distant interactions.We further found that single ASM cells could rapidly initiate multiple buds precisely pointing to neighboring cells in distance,which relied on cell traction force and force strain on the matrix.Beads tracking assay demonstrated the long-range transmission of cellular traction force to distant locations,and modeling of maximum strain distribution on matrix by finite element method predicted the consistency with cell directional protrusions and movements in experiments.Cells could sense each other in distance to move directionally on both non-fibrous matrigel and in much more efficient way when containing COL I.Cells recruited COL I from the hydrogel to build nearly identical COL I fibrous network to mechanically stabilize the cell network.Our results revealed that ASM cells can sense the traction strain transmitted through matrix to initiate distant communications and rapidly coordinate the network assembly at the population level through active cell-matrix interactions.As an interesting phenomenon,cells sound able to’make phone call’via the role of long-range mechanical force.In summary,this work demonstrated that long-range biomechanical force facilitates the collective functions of ASM cell population for network assembly.The cells reacted to traction strain on the matrix for distant communications,which resulted in directional budding and movement.Fibrous COL I had important roles in facilitating the efficiency of force transmission to induce the assembly and stabilizing the cell network.This work has helped advance the understanding of the feature andfunction of long-range biomechanical force at the cell population level.The observed high mechano-sensitivity of ASM cells might suggest a re-enforced feedback of enhanced contraction by excessive ASM under asthmatic condition.展开更多
基金supported financially by Natural Science Foundation of China ( 11532003,11872129, 31670950)Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province ( BK20181416)CZSTB Grant ( CZ20180017) from Changzhou City,Jiangsu Province
文摘Mechanobiology has been a highly recognized field in studying the importance of physical forces in physiologies at the molecular,cellular,tissue,organ and body-levels.Beside the intensive work focusing on the fine local biomechanical forces,the long-range force which can propagate through a relatively distant scale(in hundreds of micrometers and beyond)has been an intriguing topic with increasing attentions in recent years.The collective functions at cell population level often rely on cell-cell communications with or without direct contacts.Recent progresses including our own work indicate that the long-range biomechanical force propagating across scales far beyond single cell size may reserve the capability to trigger coordinative biological responses within cell population.Whether and how cells communicate mechanically in a distant manner remains largely to be explored.In respiratory system,the mechanical property of airway smooth muscle(ASM)is associated with asthma attack with prolonged contraction during airway hyper-responsiveness.In this work,we found that ASM cells rapidly self-assembled into a well-constructed network on 3D matrigel containing type I collagen(COL I),which required the collective functions and coordination of thousands of cells completed within 12-16 hours.Cells were assembled with aligned actin stress fibers and elongated nuclei.The assembling process relied on the long-range mechanical forces across the matrix to direct cell-cell distant interactions.We further found that single ASM cells could rapidly initiate multiple buds precisely pointing to neighboring cells in distance,which relied on cell traction force and force strain on the matrix.Beads tracking assay demonstrated the long-range transmission of cellular traction force to distant locations,and modeling of maximum strain distribution on matrix by finite element method predicted the consistency with cell directional protrusions and movements in experiments.Cells could sense each other in distance to move directionally on both non-fibrous matrigel and in much more efficient way when containing COL I.Cells recruited COL I from the hydrogel to build nearly identical COL I fibrous network to mechanically stabilize the cell network.Our results revealed that ASM cells can sense the traction strain transmitted through matrix to initiate distant communications and rapidly coordinate the network assembly at the population level through active cell-matrix interactions.As an interesting phenomenon,cells sound able to’make phone call’via the role of long-range mechanical force.In summary,this work demonstrated that long-range biomechanical force facilitates the collective functions of ASM cell population for network assembly.The cells reacted to traction strain on the matrix for distant communications,which resulted in directional budding and movement.Fibrous COL I had important roles in facilitating the efficiency of force transmission to induce the assembly and stabilizing the cell network.This work has helped advance the understanding of the feature andfunction of long-range biomechanical force at the cell population level.The observed high mechano-sensitivity of ASM cells might suggest a re-enforced feedback of enhanced contraction by excessive ASM under asthmatic condition.
