Cells Under Stress

UCSB researchers create a device to help understand how cells communicate to form tissues and maintain integrity under loading.

January 11, 2019
Beth L. Pruitt.
Beth L. Pruitt.

Time-lapse of epithelial cells moving in response to shear force.

As cells divide to form tissues and organs in multicell organisms, they move to where they belong, informed by a series of cues that scientists have yet to observe or fully understand.

These collective movements traditionally have been studied in the context of biochemical recognition between cell types. For example, the protein cadherin (found in, and named for, calcium dependent adhesions) is one element responsible for cells’ ability to recognize one another, with various types of cadherin occurring at different sites in the organism. These cadherin receptors enable like cells to combine with each other to build specific types of tissue; for example, E-cadherin is so named because it is found in epithelial cells.

“Cadherins provide an initial signal for the ‘handshake’ between cells, but they are not the primary keeper of the connection,” says UC Santa Barbara professor and mechanical engineer Beth Pruitt, who studies mechanobiology and is working to gain a greater understanding of how cells combine to form tissues and maintain their integrity under the normal loads they experience.

Understanding the chemo-mechanical mechanisms that drive such biological action would better position scientists to develop treatments for conditions and diseases that arise when something goes wrong in the recognition process. That includes cancer metastasis, a process in which cancer cells lose their preference for staying with “like” cells and migrate out of a tumor; or defective development or wound healing, in which like cells fail to bond to build or repair healthy tissues.