FBS Colloquia No.198Department of Medical Biochemistry

Cellular traction force assay

Recent progress in understanding the essential roles of mechanical forces in regulating various cellular functions expands the field of biology to one where interdisciplinary approaches with mechanical engineering techniques become important. Cellular traction forces (CTF) - present in proliferative cells including cancer cells due to the activity of ubiquitous nonmuscle myosin II (NMII) - are one of such endogenous mechanical forces (or signal regulators), but because NMII works downstream of diverse signaling pathways, it is often difficult to predict how the CTF changes upon perturbations to particular molecules such as gene mutations and drugs. Here I will talk about our bioengineering technology with a high-throughput data analysis capability to determine whether the endogenous CTF is upregulated or downregulated. One example that I will show focuses on the effect of mutations in the human MYH9 gene that encodes NMII, which have been implicated in the pathogenesis of nephritis.