ABSTRACT
Over 2300 years have passed since Aristotle first identified “touch” as one of the five exteroceptive senses, marking one of the first discussions in the academic literature of mechanosensation, the ability to sense mechanical forces. In the intervening time, we have learned a great deal about how cells convert mechanical sensations into chemical signals, a process known as mechanotransduction. Importantly, we have learned that mechanotransduction serves not only as a sensory mechanism for cells and tissues, but as a regulatory mechanism as well. Numerous studies over the last several decades have revealed the robust sensitivity of mammalian cells to mechanical cues such as shear flow, cyclic strain, and microenvironmental stiffness, demonstrating that the mechanical microenvironment participates centrally in the homeostasis of cells and tissues, and that disruptions of these mechanical cues can contribute to the onset and progression of disease [1,2]. The field of mechanobiology, which examines how cells sense, process, and respond to mechanical stimuli, has emerged at the intersection of the physical and biological sciences to examine the often subtle yet complex relationship between mechanical force and cell and tissue behavior.
