力敏感受体介导细胞功能调控的力学生物学研究

As the interface between cells and their external environment for materials and energy exchange, the cell membrane is an important structure that regulates cellular activities. Representative transmembrane force-sensitive receptors, such as integrins and cadherins, are found to play key roles in mediating cellular interactions with the ECM or adjacent cells. These interactions will then transduce mechanical stimuli into biochemical signals, which in turn activate a series of intracellular signaling cascade, and ultimately affect cell growth, differentiation, proliferation, migration and apoptosis etc. The investigation of cellular mechanobiology regulated by force-sensitive adhesion receptors has thus become the key to explore the mechanobiological mechanisms of cellular actively in response to complex mechanical microenvironments. This provides valuable theoretical and experimental basis for further understanding of the changes in cell functions under physiological and pathological conditions, as well as for revealing the mechanism of disease development. This review summarizes the cutting-edge progresses in cellular mechanobiology regulated force-sensitive adhesion receptors. This review begins by introducing the structure and function of force-sensitive receptors at the adhesion interface, and followed by elaborating systematic mathematical models of how cells sense and respond to mechanical signals mediated by these receptors. It also outlines the processes of mechanical signal transduction through force-sensitive receptors, and the mechanobiological mechanism of adhesion-mediated changes in cell functions. In addition, the techniques for constructing of in vitro mechanical microenvironment that mimic cell-ECM (via integrin ligation) and cell-cell (via cadherin ligation) interactions are described. Finally, we identify the future directions of mechanobiology in terms of force-sensitive receptors regulated cell functions.