title: Intracellular stresses in patterned cell assemblies.
abstract: Confining cells on adhesive patterns allows performing robust, weakly dispersed, statistical analysis. A priori, adhesive patterns could be efficient tools to analyze intracellular cell stress fields, in particular when patterns are used to force the geometry of the cytoskeleton. This tool could then be very helpful in deciphering the relationship between the internal architecture of the cells and the mechanical, intracellular stresses. However, the quantification of the intracellular stresses is still something delicate to perform. Here we first propose a new, very simple and original method to quantify the intracellular stresses, which directly relates the strain the cells impose on the extracellular matrix to the intracellular stress field. This method is used to analyze how confinement influences the intracellular stress field. As a result, we show that the more confined the cells are, the more stressed they will be. The influence of the geometry of the adhesive patterns on the stress patterns is also discussed.
authors.affiliation: LTM c/o CEA Léti, Université Joseph Fourier, CNRS UMR 5129, 17 av des Martyrs, F-38054 Grenoble cedex, France. alice.nicolas@cea.fr.
authors.forename: Michel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Moussus
authors.forename: Christelle
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: der Loughian
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Fuard
authors.forename: Marie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Courçon
authors.forename: Danielle
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gulino-Debrac
authors.forename: Hélène
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Delanoë-Ayari
authors.forename: Alice
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nicolas
mesh_terms: D002448:Cell Adhesion; D055119:Elastic Modulus; D061307:Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D013314:Stress, Mechanical