title: Synthetic mechanobiology: engineering cellular force generation and signaling.
abstract: Mechanobiology seeks to understand and control mechanical and related biophysical communication between cells and their surroundings. While experimental efforts in this field have traditionally emphasized manipulation of the extracellular force environment, a new suite of approaches has recently emerged in which cell phenotype and signaling are controlled by directly engineering the cell itself. One route is to control cell behavior by modulating gene expression using conditional promoters. Alternatively, protein activity can be actuated directly using synthetic protein ligands, chemically induced protein dimerization, optogenetic strategies, or functionalized magnetic nanoparticles. Proof-of-principle studies are already demonstrating the translational potential of these approaches, and future technological development will permit increasingly precise control over cell mechanobiology and improve our understanding of the underlying signaling events.
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley, United States; UC Berkeley - UCSF Graduate Program in Bioengineering, United States.
authors.forename: Jasmine Hannah
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Hughes
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley, United States. Electronic address: skumar@berkeley.edu.
authors.forename: Sanjay
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kumar
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D001703:Biophysics; D002468:Cell Physiological Phenomena; D006801:Humans; D040542:Mechanotransduction, Cellular; D015398:Signal Transduction